"She went even further than this, and aided him in every possible way in his work of restoration. To retrench expenses, so that every spare dollar should go to that enterprise, she discharged her housekeeper, reduced her establishment of servants, and took upon her own shoulders the additional burdens lately borne by those whom she had discharged from her service. She worked hard and constantly. No one knew how severely she toiled--not even her husband, until her labors seriously affected her health. Then Ernest Van Der Vaughan remonstrated. But she smiled and pointed to the growing fields and to the rising mansion.
"Yet the restoration of the lands and the elevation of the house was a work of years. Often progress was arrested by the want of funds, and then, though it cost the mistress many severe heart pangs, one after another of the old family servants were sold to raise the necessary amount, and their places in the field had to be supplied by fresh drafts upon the small household establishment, until at last the mistress was reduced to one maid-of-all-work about her person.
"I do not think your citizens, Agnes, dream of how much labor devolves upon the mistress of a large plantation in circumstances such as these. Even when assisted by an efficient housekeeper, and many well-trained servants, the duties are onerous, sometimes oppressive, Madeleine Van Der Vaughan had deprived herself of nearly all help; but most willingly she bore her self-assumed burden, only showing distress when some financial exigency compelled her to wound humanity. She gave her heart, her life, to one object of her ambition. Yes--literally, this was so; for it was observable that as the carefully tended land recovered, she lost vitality, and as the mansion arose, she sank.
"It was in glorious autumn, when the richest wheat harvest that had ever been reaped in the State was gathered into the barns of Wolfbrake, and the finest corn crop that had ever grown in the valley, stood ripe in the fields, that the house was finished.
"So much money had been spent and so many debts remained to be paid, that there was but little to expend upon furniture, and Mrs. Van Der Vaughan could not appoint her house in a style so gorgeous as would have satisfied her ambition. However, it was furnished in the manner that you now see, which, after all, is much handsomer than anything that was known to the grand old Van Der Vaughans in their grandest days of, no doubt, fabulous grandeur.