Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1894 — UNITED AT LASY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNITED AT LASY

BY HISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER V. THE DREAM IB ENDED. Mrs. Walsingham wrote to Gilbert Sinclair, immediately after Mr. Wyatt’s departure, a few ha-sty lines begging him to come to her without delay. “Something has occurred,” she ■wrote, “an event of supreme importance. I will tell you nothing more till we meet.” She dispatched her groom to the Albany with this note, and then waited with intense impatience for Gilbert Sinclair's coming. If he were at home, it ■was scarcely possible he would refuse to come to her. “I shall know the worst very soon, ” she said to herself, as she sat behind the flowers that shaded her window. "After to-day there shall be no uncertainty between us —no further reservation on my part—no more acting on his. He shall find that lam not his dupe, to be fooled to the last point, and to be taken bv surprise some fine morning by the announcement of his marriage in the Times. ” Mr. Sinclair was not at home when note was delivered, but between 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon his thundering knock assailed the dodr, and he came into the room announced. In spite of the previous night's ball he had ridden fifteen miles into the country that morning to attend a sale of hunters, and was looking flushed with his long ride. “What on earth is the matter, Clara?” he asked. “I have been out since 8 o’clock. Poor Townley’s stud was sold off this morning at a pretty little place he had beyond Barnet, and I rode down there to see if there was anything worth bidding for, I might have saved myself the trouble, for I never saw such a pack of screws. The ride was pleasant enough, however.” “I wonder you were out so early after last night’s dance.” “Oh, you’ve seen my name down among the swells,” he answered, with rather a forced laugh. “Yes, I was hard at it last night, no end of waltzes and galops. But. you know, late hours never make much difference to me.”

“Was it a very pleasant party?" “The usual thing—too many people for the rooms. ” “Your favorite, Miss Clanyarde, was there, I see.” “Yes; the Clanyardes were there. But I suppose you haven’t sent for me to ask questions about Lady Deptford's ball? I thought by your letter something serious had happened. ” “Something serious has happened. My husband is dead.” She said the words very slowly, with her eyes fixed on Gilbert Sinclair’s face. The florid color faded suddenly out of his cheeks, and left him ghastly pale. Of all the events within the range of probability, this was the last he had expected to hear of, and the most unwelcome. “Indeed!” he stammered, after an awkward pause. “I suppose I ought to congratulate you on the recovery of your freedom?” “I am very glad to be free.” “What did he die of—Colonel Waleingham? And how did you get the news?” ' “Through a foreign paper. He was killed in a duel. * * 4 And then she repeated the contents of the paragraph James Wyatt had read to her. “Is the news correct, do you think? No mistake about the identity of the person in question?” “None whatever, I am convinced. However, I shall drive into the city presently and see the solicitor who arranged our separation. I know the Colonel was in the habit of corresponding with him, and no doubt he will be able to give official intelligence of the event.” After this there came another pause, more awkward than the first. Gilbert sat with his eyes fixed upon the carpet, tracing out the figures of it meditatively with his stick, with an air of study as profound as if he had been an art designer bent upon achieving some novel combination of form and color. Clara Walsingham sat opposite to him, waiting for him to speak, with a pale, rigid face that grew more stony-fook-ing as the silence continued. That silence became at last quite unendurable, and Gilbert felt himself obliged to say something, no matter what. “Does this business make any alteration in your circumstances?” Gilbert asked, with a faint show of interest. “Only for the better,, I surrendered to the Colonel the income of one of the estates my father left me, in order to bribe him into consenting to' a separation. Henceforward the income will be mine. My poor father took pains to secure me from the possibility of being ruined by a husband. My fortune was wholly at my own disposal, but I was willing to make the surrender in •question in exchange for my liberty.” “I am glad to find that you will be so well off,” said Mr. Sinclair, still engrossed by the pattern of the carpet. “Is that all you have to say?” “What more can I say upon the subject?” . “There was a time when you would have said a great deal more. ” “Very likely,” answered, Gilbert, bluntly; “but then, you see, that time is past and gorie. What is it Friar Bacon’s brazen head said, ‘Time is, time was, time's 1 past?’ Come, Clara, it is very little use for you and me to play at cross-purposes. Why did you send for me in such hot haste to tell me of your husband’s death?” “Became I had reason to consider the news would be as welcome to you as it was to me. ” “That might have been so if the •event had happened a year or two ago; unhappily your release comes too late for my welfare. You accused me the other day of intending to jilt you. I think that was scarcely fair when it is remembered how long I was contented to remain your devoted slave, patiently waiting for something better than slavery. There is a limit to all things, however, and I confess the bondage became a little irksome at last, and I began to lot k in other directions for the happiness of my future life." “Does that mean that you are going to be married?”

“It does.” “The lady is Miss Clanyarde, I conclude,” said Mrs. Walsingham. Her breathing was a little hurried, but there was no other outward sign of the storm that raged within. “Yes, the lady is Constance Clanyarde. And now, my dear Clara, let me entreat you to be reasonable, and to consider how long I waited for the chance that has come at last too late to be of any avail, so far as I am concerned. lam not coxcomb enough to fear that you will regret me very much, and I am sure you know that I shall always regard you with the warmest friendship and admiration. With your splendid attractions you will have plenty of opportunities in the matrimonial line, and will have, I dare say, little reason to lament my secession. ” Clara Walsingham looked at him with unutterable scorn. “And I once gave you credit for a heart, Gilbert Sinclair,” she raid. “Well, the dream is ended.” “Don't let us part ill-friends, Clara. Say you wish me well in my new life.” “I cannot say anything so false. No, Gilbert, I will not take your hand. There can be no such thing as friendship between you and me.” “That seems rather hard,” answered Sinclair in a sulky tone. “But let it be as you please. Good-by.” “Good-morning, Mr. Sinclair." Mrs. Walsingham rang the bell, but before her summons could be answered Gilbert Sinclair had gone out of the house. He walked back to the Albany in a very gloomy frame of mind, thinking it a hard thing that Col. Walsingham should have chosen this crisis for his death. He was glad that the interview was over, and that Clara knew what she had to expect, but he felt an uneasy sense that the business was not yet finished. “She took it pretty quietly, upon the whole,” he said to himself: “but there was a look in her eyes that I didn't like. ” Mrs. Walsingham called on her late husband’s lawyer in the course of the afternoon, and received a confirmation of James Wyatt's news. Her husband’s death increased her income from two to three thousand a year, arising chiefly from landed property which had been purchased by her father, a city tradesman, who had late in life conceived the idea of becoming a country squire, and had died of the dullness incident upon an unrecognized position in the depths of the country. His only daughter’s marriage with Colonel Walsingam had been a severe affliction to him, but he had taken care to settle his money upon her in such a manner as if to secure it from any depredations on the part of her husband.

CHAPTER VI. “ARISE, BLACK VENGEANCE. FROM THY HOLLOW CELL ” The summer had melted into autumn, the London season was over, and the Clanyardes had left their furnished house in Eaton Place, which the Viscount bad taken for the season, to return to Marchbrook, where Gilbert' Sinclair was to follow them as a visitor. He had proposed for Constance, and had been accepted—with much inward rejoicing on the part of the father; with a strange conflict of feeling in the mind of the lady herself. Did she love the man she had promised to marry? Well, no; there was no such feeling as love for Gilbert Sinclair in her mind. She thought him tolerably good-looking, and not exactly disagreeable, and it had been impressed upon her that he was one of the richest men in England —a man who could bestow upon her everything which a well-bred young lady must, by education and nature, desire. The bitter pinch of poverty had been severely felt at Marchbrook, and the Clanyarde girls had been taught, in an indirect kind of way, that they were bound to contribute to the restoration of the family fortunes by judicious marriages. The two elder girls Adelia, and Margaret, had married well—one Sir Henry Erlington, a Sussex baronet, with a very nice place and a comfortable income, the other a rich East Indian merchant, considerably past middle age. But the fortunes of Sir Henry, and Mr. Campion, the merchant, were as nothing compared with the wealth of Gilbert Sinclair; and Lord Clanyarde told his daughter Constance that she would put her sisters to shame by the brilliancy of her marriage. He"flew into a tertible passion when she at first expressed herself disinclined to accept Mr. Sinclair’s offer, and asked her how she dared to fly in the face of Providence by refusing such a splendid destiny. What in Heaven's name did she expect, a girl without a sixpence of her own, and with nothing but her pretty face and aristocratic lineage to recommend her? He sent his wife to talk to her, and Lady Clanyarde, who was a very meek person, and lived in a state of perpetual subservience to her husband, held forth dolefully to her daughter for upward of an hour upon the foolishness and ingratitude of her course. Then came the two married sisters with more lecturing and persuasion, and at last the girl gave way. fairly tired out, and scolded into a kind of desponding submission. So Gilbert Sinclair came one morning to Eaton Place, and finding Miss Clanyarde alone in the drawing-room, made her a sblemn offer of his heart and hand. He had asked her to be his wife before this, and she had put him off with an answer that was almost a refusal. Then had come the lecturing and scolding, and she had been schooled into resignation to a fate that seemed to her irresistible. She told her suitor that she did not love him—that if she accepted him it would be in deference to her father’s wishes, and that she could give him nothing in return for the affection he was so good as to entertain for her. This was enough for Gilbert, who was bent on winning her for his wife in a headstrong, reckless spirit, that made no count of the cost. But as Miss Clanyarde sat by and by with her hand in his, and listened to his protestations of affection, there rose before her the vision of a sac not Gilbert Sinclair’s— a darkly, splendid face, that had looked upon her with such unutterable love one summer day in the shadowy Kentish lane; and she wished that Cyprian Davenant had carried her off to some strange, desolate land, in which they might have lived and died together. “What will he thimc of me when he hears that I have sold myself to this man for the sake of his fortune?" she asked herself. And then she looked up at Gilbert’s face and wondered whether she could ever teach herself to love him, or to be grateful to him for his love. All this had happened within a week of Gilbert’s final interview with Mrs. Walsingham, and in a very short time the fact of Mr. Sinclair’s engagement to Miss Clanyarde was pretty well known to all that gentleman’s iriends and acquaintances. He was very proud of carrying off a girl whose beauty had made a considerable sensation in the past two seasons, and he talked of his matrimonial projects in

a swaggering, boastful way that was eminently distasteful to some of his acquaintances. Men who were familiar with Mr. Sinclair's antecedents shrugged their shoulders ominously when the marriage was discussed, and augured ill for the future happiness of Miss Clanyarde. “Yes ” answered Gilbert, “she’s a lovely girl, isn't she? and of course I'm proud of her affection. It's to be a regular love-match, you know. I wouldn’t marry the handsomest woman in the world if I were not secure on that point. I don t say the father hasn’t an eye to my fortune. He’s a thorough man of the world, and, of course, fully alive to that sort of thing, but Constance is superior to any such conside--ation. If I didn't believe that I would not be such a fool as to stake my happiness on the venture.” “I scarcely fancied you would look at matters from such a sentimental point of view,” said Mr. Wyatt, thoughtfully, “especially as this is by no means your first love. ’ “It is the first love worth speaking of,” answered the other. “I never knew what it was to be passionately in love till I met Constance Clanyarde.” “Not with Mrs. Walsingham?" “No, Jim. I did care for her a good deal once upon a time, but never as I care for Constance. I think if that girl were to play me false I should kill myself. By the way, I’m sure you know more about Cyprian Davenant than you were inclined to confess the other night. I fancy there was some kind of a love affair —some youthful flirtation —between him and Constance. You might as well tell me everything you know about it.” “I know nothing about Miss Clanyarde, and I can tell you nothing about Davenant. He and 1 are old friends, and I am too fully in his confidence to talk of his sentiments or his affairs.” “What a confounded prig you are, Wyatt. But you can’t deny that Davenant was in love with Constance. I don't believe she has ever cared a straw for him, however; and if he should live to come back to England I shall take good care he never darkens my doors. How about that place of his, by the by? Is it in the market?” “Yes; I have received Sir Cyprian's instructions to sell whenever"! see a favorable opportunity. He won't profit much by the sale, poor fellow, for it is mo: tgaged up to the hilt.” “111 look at the place while at Marchbrook, and if I like it I may make you an offer. We shall want something nearer town than the place my father built in the north, but I shall not give up that, either. ” “You can afford a couple of country seats, and you will have a house in town, of course?” “Yes; I have been thinking of Park Lane, but it is so difficult to get anything there. I’ve told the agents what I want, however, and I dare say they’ll find something before long. “When are you to be married?” “Not later than October, I hope. There is not the shadow of a reason for delay.” |TO BE CONTINUED. |