Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — UNIFED AT LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNIFED AT LAST

BY MISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER Vl—Continued. At Marchbrook everything went pleasantly enough for the plighted lovers. Lora Clanyarde had filled the house with company, and his youngest daughter had very little time for reflection or regret upon the subject of her approaching marriage. Everybody congratulated her upon her conquest, and praised Gilbert Sinclair with such a show of enthusiasm that she began to think he must be worthier of a •warmer regard than she was yet able to feel for him. • She told herself that in common gratitude she was bound to return his affection, and she tried her utmost to please him by a ready submission to all his wishes; but the long drives and rides, in which they were always side by side, were very wearisome to her, nor could his gayest talk of the future, the houses, the yacht, the carriages and horses that were to Ibe hers, inspire her with any expectation of happiness. I They rode over to Davenant with [Lord Clanyarde one morning, and explored the old house, Gilbert looking at everything in a business-like spirit, iwhich jarred a little upon Constance, remembering that luckless exile who had loved the place so welt Her lover consulted her about the disposition of the rooms, the colors of new draperies, and the style of the furniture. “We’ll get rid of the gloomy old tapestries and have everything modern and bright,* he said; but Lord Clanyarde pleaded hard for the preservation of the tapestry on the principal floor, which was very fine and in excellent condition. “Oh, very well,” answered Gilbert, carelessly. “In that case we’ll keep •the tapestry. I suppose the best plan will be to get some first-class London *nan to furnish the house. Those fellows always have good taste. But of course he must defer to you in all matters, Constance.” “You are very good,” she returned, listlessly. “But I don’t think there will be any necessity for my interference. ” “Don't say that, Constance. That looks as if you were not interested in the subject,” Gilbert said, with rather a discontented air. The listlessness of manner which his betrothed so often displayed was by no means pleasing to him. There was a disagreeable suspicion growing in his mind that Miss Clanyarde’s heart had not quite gone with her acceptance of his offer, that family influence had something to do with her consent to become his wife. He was not the less resolved on this account to hold her to her promise; but his selfish, tyrannical nature resented her coldness, and he "was determined that the balance should be adjusted between them in the future.

“Perhaps you don’t like this place, Constance,” he said, presently, after watching her thoughtful face for some minutes in silence. “Oh, yes, Gilbert, I am very fond of Davenant I have known it all my life, you know.” “Then I wish you would look a little more cheerful about my intended purchase. I thought it would please you to have a country-house so near your own familv.” “And it does please her very much, I am sure, Sinclair," said Lord Clanyarde, with a stealthy frown at his daughter. “She can’t fail to appreciate the kindness and delicacy of your choice. ” “Papa is quite right, Gilbert,” added Constance. “I should be very ungrateful if I were not pleased with your kindness. ” After this she tried her utmost to sustain an appearance of interest in the discussion of furniture and decorations; but every now and then she found her mind wandering away to the banished owner of those rooms, and she wished that Gilbert Sinclair had chosen any other habitation upon this earth for her future home. October came, and with it the inevitable day which was to witness one more perjury from the lips of a bride. The wedding took place at the little village church neat Marchbrook, and was altogether a very brilliant affair, attended by all the relatives of the Clanyarde family, who were numerous, and by a great many acquaintances of bride and bridegroom. Notable among the friends of the latter was James Wyatt, the solicitor who had been employed in the drawing up of the marriage settlement, which was a most liberal one, and highly satisfactory to Viscount Clanyarde. Mr. Wyatt made himself excessively agreeable at the breakfast, and was amazingly popular among the bridesmaids. He did not long avail himself of the Marchbrook hospitalities, but went quietly back to town by rail almost immediately after the departure of the newly married couple on their honeymoon trip to the south of France. He had an engagement in Half-Moon street that evening at eight o’clock. The neighboring clocks were striking the hour as he knocked at the door. Mrs. Walsingham was quite alone in the drawing-room, and looked unusually pale in the light of the lamps. The solicitor shook his head reproachfully as he pressed her hand. “This is very sad,” he murmured, in a semi-paternal manner. “You have been worrying yourself all day long, I know. You are as pale as a ghost. ” “I am a little tired, that is all.” “You have been out to-day? You told me you should not stir from the house.” “I changed my mind at the last moment. Anything was better than staying at home keeping the day like a black fast. Besides, I wanted to see how Gilbert and his bride would look at the altar.” . “You have been down to Kent?” “Yes; I was behind the curtains of the organ-loft. The business was easily managed by means of a sovereign to the clerk. I wore my plainest dress and a thick veil, so there was very little risk of detection. ’’ “What folly!" exclaimed Wyatt. “Yes; it was great folly, no doubt; but it is the nature of women to be foolish. And now tell me all about the

wedding. Did Gilbert look very happy? “He looked like a man who has got his own way, and who cares very little what price ne has paid, or may have to pay, for the getting it." “And do you think he will be happy?" “Not if his happiness depends on the love of his wife. “Then you don't think she loves him?” “I am sure she does not. I made a study of her face during the ceremony and afterward; and if ever a woman sold herself, or was sold by her people, this woman is guilty of such a bargain.” “Perhaps you say this to please me," said Clara, doubtfully. “I do not, Mrs. Walsingham. lam convinced that this affair has been brought about by Lord Clanyarde’s necessities, and not the young lady’s choice. But I doubt whether this will make much difference to Gilbert in the long run. He is not a man of fine feelings, you know, and I think he will be satisfied with the fact of having won the woman he wanted to marry. I should think matters would go smoothly enough with him so long as he has no cause for jealousy. He would be rather an ugly customer if he took it into his head to be jealous. ” “And you think his life will go smoothly," said Clara, “and that he will go on to the end unpunished for his perfidy to me?” “What good would his punishment be to you?” “It would be all the world to me ” “And if I could bring about the retribution you desire, if it were in my power to avenge your wrongs, what reward would you give me?” She hesitated for a moment, knowing there was only one reward he was likely to claim from her. “If you were a poor man, I would offer you two-thirds of my fortune,” she said. “But you know that I am not a poor man. If I can come to you some day, and tell you that Gilbert Sinclair and his wife are parted forever, will you accept me for your husband?” “Yes,” she answered suddenly; “break the knot between those two; let me be assured that he has lost the woman lor whose sake he jilted me, and I will refuse you nothing. ” “Consider it done. There is nothing in the world I would not achieve to win you for my wife.”

CHAPTER VII. “GREEN-EYED jealousy.” It was not till early spring that Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair returned to England. They had spent the winter in Home, where Gilbert had found some congenial friends, and where their time had been occupied in one perpetual round of gayety and dissipation. Constance had shown a great taste for pleasure since her marriage. She seemed to know no wearine s of visiting and being visited, and people who remembered her in her girlish days were surprised to find what a thorough woman of the world she bad become. Nor was Gilbert displeased tfiat .it was so. He liked to see his wife' occupy a prominent position in society, and having no taste hims elf for the pleasures of the domestic hearth, he was neither surprised nor vexed by Constance’s indifference to her home. Of course it would be all different at Davenant Park: there would be plenty of home life there—a little too much, perhaps, Gilbert thought, with a yawn. They had been married nearly four months, and there had not been the shadow of a disagreement between them. Constance’s manner to her husband was amiability itself. She treated him a little de haut en bas it is true, made her own plans for the most past without reference to him, and graciously informed him of her arrangements after they were completed. But then, on the other hand, she never objected to his disposal of his time, was never exacting, or jealous, or capricious, as Clara Walsingham had been. She was always agreeable to his friends, and was eminently popular with all of them; so Gilbert Sinclair was, upon the whole, perfectly satisfied with the result of his marriage, and had no fear of evil days in the future. What James Wyatt had said of him was perfectly true. He was not gifted with very fine feelings, and that sense of something wanting in such a union, which would have disturbed the mind of a nobler man, did not trouble him. They returned to England early in February, and went at once to Daven ant, which had been furnished in th modern mediaaval style by a West End upholsterer. The staff of'servants had been provided by Lady Clanyarde. who had bestowed much pains and labor upon the task of selection, bitterly bewailing the degeneracy of the race she had to deal with during the performance of this difficult service. All was ready when Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair arrived. A pompous housekeeper simpered and courtesied in the hall; an accomplished cook hovered tenderly over the roasts and the stew-pans in the great kitchen; house-maids in smart caps flitted about the passages and poked the fires in bed-rooms and dressing-rooms, bath-rooms and morn-ing-room, eager to get an early look at their new lady; a butler of the usual clerical appearance ushered the way to the lamp-lit drawing-room, while two ponderous footmen conveyed the rugs and newspapers and morocco bags from the carriage, leaving all the heavier luggage to the care of unknown underlings attached to the stable department. Mr. and Mrs, Sinclair dined _ alone upon this first evening of their return, under the inspection of the clerical butler and the two ponderous footmen. They talked chiefly about the house, which rooms were most successful in their new arrangement, and so on; a little about what they had been doing in Rome; and a little about their plans for the next month, what guests were to be invited, and what rooms they were to occupy. It was all the most matter of.-fact conventional talk, but the three men retired with the impression that Gilbert Sinclair and his wife were a very nappy couple, and - reported to that effect in the house-keeper’s room and the servants’ hall. Before the wtek had ended the great house was full of ccmpany. That feverish desire for gayety and change which had seem ad a part of Constance’s nature since her maniage in no way subsided on her arrival at Davenant. She appeared to exist for pleasure, and pleasure only, and her guests declared ner the. most charming hoste.-s that fever reigned over a country housel Lavish as he was, Mr. Sinclair opened his eyes to their widest extent when he perceived his wife’s capacity for spending money. | . “It’s rather lucky for you that you didn’t marry a poor man, Constance,” he said, with a boastful laugh. She looked at him for a moment with a strange expression, and then turned very pale. “I should not have been afraid to face poverty," she said, “if it had been my fate to do sa"

“If you eould have faced tt wfth the man you liked, eh, Constance? That’s about what you mean, isn't it?” “Is this intended for a complaint, Gilbert?" his wife asked in her coldest tones. “Have I been spending too much money?" “No, no; I didn’t mean that I was only congratulating you upon yout fittei- for the position of a rich man’s wife.” This was the first little outbreak of jealousy of whicn Gilbert Sinclair had been guilty. He knew that his wife did not love him, that his conquest had been achieved through the influence of her family, and he was almost angry with himself for being so fond of her. He could not forget those vague hints that had been dropped about Sir Cyprian Davenant, ana was tormented with the idea that James Wyatt knew a great deal more than he had revealed on this point. This hidden jealousy had been at the bottom of the purchase of the Davenant estate. He took a savage delight in reigning over the the little kingdom from whicn his rival had been deposed. Among the visitors from London appeared Mr. Wyatt, always unobtrusive, and always useful. He contrived to ingratiate himself very rapidly in Mrs. Sinclair’s favor, and established himself as a kind of adjutant in her household corps, always ready with advice upon every social subject, from the costumes in a tableau vivant to the composition of the menu for a dinnerparty. Constance did not particularly like him; but she lived in a world in which it is not necessary to have a very sincere regard for one's acquaintance, and she considered him an agreeable person, much to be preferred to the geneiaity of her husbands chosen companions, who were men without a thought beyond the hunting field and race-course. Mr. Wyatt, on his part, was a little surprised to see the manner in which Lord Clanyarde’s daughter filled her new position, the unfailing vivacity which she displayed in the performance of her duties as a hostess, and the excellent terms upon which she appeared to live with her husband. He was accustomed, however, to look below the surface of things, and by the the time he had been a fortnight at Davenant he had discovered that all this brightness and gayety on the part of the wife indicated an artificial state of being, which was very far from real happiness, and that there was a growing sense of disappointment on the part of the husband. He was not in the habit of standing upon much ceremony in his intercourse with Gilbert Sinclair, and on the first convenient occasion questioned him with blunt directness upon the subject of his marriage. “I hone the alliance has brought you all the happiness you anticipated?” he said. “Oh, yes, Jim,” Mr. Sinclair answered, rather moodily, “my wife suits me pretty well. We get on very well together. She's a little too fond of playing the woman of fashion; but she’ll be tired of that in time, I dare say. I'm fond of society myself, you know, couldn t lead a Solitary life for any woman in Christendom; but I should like a wife who seemed to care a little more for my company, and was not always occupied with other people. I don't think we have dined alone three times since we were married. ”

It was within a few days of this conversation that Wyatt gratified himself with the performance of a little experiment which he had devised in the comfortable retirement of his bachelor room at Davenant. He had come into Mrs. Sinclair's morning-room after breakfast to consult her upon the details of an amateur dramatic performance that was to take place shortly, and hai, for a wonder, found the husband and wife alone together. “Perhaps we’d better discuss the business at some other time,” he said. *1 know Sinclair doesn’t care much about this sort of thing.” “Is that your theatrical rubbish?” asked Gilbert. “You'd better say what you've got to say about it. You needn't mind me. I can absorb myself in the study of ‘Bell s Life’ for a quarter of an hour or so.” He withdrew to one of the windows, and occupied himself with his newspaper, while James Wyatt showed Constance the books of some farces that had just come to him by post, and discussed the fitness of each for drawingroom representation “Every amateur in polite society believes himself able to play Charles Matthews' business,” he said laughing. “It is a fixed delusion of the human mind. Of course we shall set them all by the ears, do what we may. Perhaps it would do better to let them draw lots for characters, or we might put the light comedy parts up to auction, and send the proceeds to the poorbox.”

He ran on in this strain gayly enough. Writing lists of the characters and pieces, and putting down the names of the guests with a rapid pen as he talked, until Gilbert Sinclair threw down his newspaper and cam > over to the fire-place, politely requesting his friend to stop tnat row.” It was a hopelessly wet morning, and the master of Davenant was sorely at a loss for amusement and occupation. He had come to his wife’s room in rather a defiant spirit, determined that she should favor him with a little more of her society than it was her habit to rive him, and he had found her writing letters, which she declared were Imperative, and had sat by the fire waiting for her correspondence to be finished, in a very sulky mood. “What’s the last news, Wyatt?” he asked, poking the fire savagely; “anything stirring in London?” “Nothing—in London. There is some news of an old friend of mine whp’s far away from London—news I don’t altogether like.” “Some client who has bolted in order to swindle you out of a long bill of costs, 1 suppose," answered Gilbert, indifferently. “No; the friend I am talking of is a gentleman we all know—the late owner of this place. ” “Sir Cyprian Davenant?" cried Gilbert.

Constance looked up from her writing. “Sir Cyprian Davenant,” repeated James Wyatt. “Has anything happened to him?" “A,bout the last and worst thing that can happen to any man, I fear,” answered the lawyer. “For some time since there have been no reports of Captain Harcourt's expedition; and that in a negative way, was about as bad as could be. But in a letter I received this morning, from a member of the Geographical Society, there is worse news. My friend tells me there is a very general belief that Harcourt and his party have been made away with by the natives. Of course, this is all club gossip as yet, and I trust that it may turn out a false alarm.” Constance had dropped her pen, making a great blot upon the page. She was very pale, and her hands were elasped nervously upon the table before her. Gilbert watched her with eager, angry eyes.’ It was just such an opportunity as he had wished for. He wanted above all things to satisfy his doubts ab)ut that man. “I don’t see that it much matters whether the report is true or false,” he ■aid, “as far as Davenant is concerned. The fejlow is a scamp, and only left England because he had spent his last sixpence in dissipation.” “I beg your pardon, Sinclair,” remonstrated Mr. Wyatt, “the Davenant property was impoverished by Cyprian's father and grandfather. ’ I do not say that he was not extravagant himself at one period of his life, but he had reformed long before he left England.” “Reformed yes, when he had no more money to spend. That’s a common kind ot reform. However, I suppose you’ve profited so much by hif> ruin that you can afford to praise him.”

“Hadn't you better ring the bell?" asked James Wyatt, very quietly; “I think Mrs. Sinclair has fainted.” He was right; Constance Sinclair s head had fallen back upon the cushion of her chair and her eyes were closed. Gilbert ran across to her and seized her hand. It was deadly cold. “Yes," he said, “she has fainted. Sir Cyprian was an old friend of hers. You know that better than I do, though you have never chosen to tell me the truth. And now I suppose you have trumped up this »tory in order to let me see what a fool I have been.” “It is not a trumped-up story,” returned the other. “It is the common talk among men who know the travelers and their line of country." “Then for your friend’s sake it is to be hoped it’s true." “Why so?" “Because if he has escaped those black fellows to come my way it will be so much worse for both of; tor as sure as there is a sky above us, if he and I meet I shall kill him.” “Bah," muttered Mr. Wyatt, contemptuously, “we don’t live in an age for that sort of thing. Here comes yourwife'b maid; I’ll get out of the way. Pray apologize to Mrs. Sinclair for my indiscretion in forgetting that tiir Cyprian was a friend of her family. IVWjto only natural that she should be The lawyer went away as the maid

' came into the room. Hid face was , brightened by a satisfied smile as he walked slowly along the corridor leading to the billiard-room. “Othello was a fool to him in the matter of jealousy,” he said to himself, j“I think Ive fired the train. If the | news I heard is true, and Davenant is I on his way home, there’ll be nice work i by and by.'’ - ■ in t CHAPTER Vi 11. •■HAD YOC LOVED ME ONCE AS TOO HAVE NOT LOVED. ” Gilbert Sinclair taid very little to his wife about the tainting fit. She was herself perfectly candid upon the sub.ect. Sir Cyprian was an old friend —a friend whom she had known and liked ever since childhood—and Mr. Wyatt s news had quite overcome her. She did not seem to consider it necessary to apologize for her emotion. “I have been overexerting myself a i little lately, or I should scarcely have fainted, however sorry I felt," she said, quietly and Gilbert wondered at her self-possession, but was not the less convinced that the had loved—that she still did love—Cyprian Davenant. He watched her closely after this to see if he could detect signs of hidden grief, but her manner in society had lost none of its brightness, and when the Harcourt expedition was next spoken of she bore her part in the conversation with perfect ease. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair left Davenant early in May for a charming house in Park Lane, furnished throughout in delicate tints of white and green, like a daisy-sprinkled meadow, in early ; spring, a style in which the upholsterer had allowed full scope to the sentimentality of his own nature, bearing in mind that the house was to be occupied by a newly married couple. Mrs. Sinclair declared herself perfectly satisfied with the house, and Mrs. Sinclair s friends were in raptures with it. She instituted a Thursday evening supper after the opera, whici was an immense success, and enjoyed a popularity that excited some enw on the part of unmarried beauties. Mrs. Walsingham heard of the Thursday evening parties, and saw her beautiful rival very often at the opera; but she heard from .lames Wyatt that Gilbert Sinclair spent a great deal of his time at his club, and made a point of attending all the race meetings, habits that did not augur well for his domestic happiness. “He will grow tired of her, as he did of me,” thought Clara Walsingham. But Gilbert was in no way weary of his wife. He loved her as passionately as he had loved her at the first; with an exacting selfish passion, it is true, but with all the intensity of which his nature was capable. If he had lived in the good old feudal days ho would have shut her up in somj lonely turret chamber, where no one but himself could approach her. He knew that she did not love him; and with his own affection for her there was always mingled an angry sense of her coldness and ingratitude. The London season came to an end once more, and Mr. and Airs. Sinclair went back to Davenant. Nothing had been heard of .sir Cyprian or his companions throughout the Summer, and Gilbert had ceased to trouble himself about his absent rival. The man was dead, in all probability, and it was tomething more than folly to waste a thought upon nim. So things went on pleasantly enough, until the early spring gave a baby daughter to the master of Davenant, much to his disappointment, as he ardently desired a son and heir.

The birth of this infant brought a new sense of joy to the mind of Const inee Sinclair! She had not thought it possible that the child could give her so much happines--. She devoted herself to her baby with a tenderness which was at first very pleasing to her husband, but which became by and by distasteful to him. He grew jealous of the child’s power to absorb so much affection from one who had never given him the love he longed for. The existence of his daughter seemed to bring him no nearer to his wife. The time and attention which she had given to society she now gave to her child; but her husband was no more to her than he had ever been, a litt'e less, perhaps, as he told himself angrily in the course of his gloomy meditations. Mrs. Walsingham read the announcement of the infant’s birth in extreme bitterness of spirit, and when James Wyatt next called upon her she asked him what had become of his promise that those two Should be parted by his agency. .., ; ' The lawyer shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly. “I did’ not tell you that the parting should take place within any given time," he said: “but it shall go hard_with me if Ido not keep my promise'sooner 6r later." He had indeed not been idle. The wicked work which he had set himself to do had progressed considerably. It was he who always contrived, in a subtle manner, to remind Gilbert Sinclair of his wife's coldness toward himself and to hint at her affection for another, while seeming to praise and defend her. Throughout their acquaintance his wealthy client had treated him with a selfish indifference and a cool, unconscious insolence, that had galled him to the quick, and he took a malicious pleasure in the discomfiture which Sinclair had brought upon him elf by his marriage. When the Sinclairs returned to London, some months after the birth of the child, James Wyatt contrived to make himself more than ever necessary to Gilbert, who had taken to play higher than of old, and who now spent four evenings out of the six lawful days at a notorious whist club, sitting at the card table till the morning sun shone through the chinks in the shutters. Mr. Wyatt was a member of the same club, but too cautious a player for the set which Gilbert now affected.

“That fellow is going to the bad in every way,” the lawyer said to himself. “If Clara Walsingham wants to see him ruined she is likely to have her wish without any direct interference of mine.” The state of affairs in Pane Lane was indeed far from satisfactory. Gilbert had grown tired of playing the indulgent husband, and the inherent brutality of his nature had on more than one occasion displayed itself in angry disputes with his wife, whose will he now seemed to take a pleasure in thwarting, even in trifles. He complained of her present extravagance, with insolent reference to the poverty of her girlhood, and asked savagely if she thought his fortune could stand forever against her expensive follies. “I don t think my follies are so likely to exhaust your income- as your inincreasing taste for horse-racing, Gilbert,” she answered, coolly. “What is to be the cost of these racing stables you are building near ;Newmarket? I heard you, and that dreadful man, your trainer, talking of the tan galop" the other day, and it seemed to me altogether rather an expensive affair, es-

peolally as your horse a have such a knack of getting beaten. It is most gentleman-like of you to remind me of my poverty. Yes, I was very poor in my girl-hood—and very happy." “And since you’ve married me you've been miserable. Pleasant, upon my soul! You'd have married that fellow Cyprian Davenant and lived in a tenroomed house in the suburbs, with a maid of all work, and called that happiness, I suppose I” “If I had married Sir Cyprian Davenant I should at least have been the wife of a gentleman,” replied Constance. This was not the first time that Gilbert had mentioned Cyprian Devenant of late. A report of the missing travelers had appeared in one of the newspapers, and their friends began to hope for their safe return. Gilbert Sinclair brooded over this probable return in a savage frame of mind, but did not communicate his thoughts upon the subject to his usual confidant, Mr. Wyatt, who thereupon opined that those thoughts were more than ordinarily bitter.

Before the London season was over Mr. Sinclair had occasion to attetf<T a rather insignificant meeting in Yorkshire where a 2-year-old filly, from which he expected great things in the future, was to try her strength in a handicap rape. He came home by way of Newmarket, where he spent a few days pleasantly enough in the supervision of his new buildings, and he had been absent altogether a week when he returned to Park Lane. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon when he drove up to his own house in a hansom. He found his wife in the drawing-room occupied with several visitors, among whom appeared a tall figure which he remembered only too well, Sir Cyprian Davenant, bronzed with travel, and looking handsomer than when he left London. Gilbert stood at gaze for a moment, confounded by surprise, and then went through the ceremony of hand-shaking with his wife’s guests in an awkward, embarrassed manner. Constance received him with her usual coldness, and he felt himself altogether at a disadvantage in the presence of the man he feared and hated. He seated himself, however, determined to see the end of this obnoxious visit, and remained moodily silent until the callers had dropped off one by one, Sir Cyprian among the earliest departures. Gilbert turned savagely upon his wife directly the room was clear. “So your old favorite has lost no time in renewing his intimacy with you,” he said. “I came home at rather an awkward moment, I fancy.” “I did not perceive any particular awkwardness in your return, his wife answered coolly, “unless it was your manner to my friends, which was calculated to give them the idea that you scarcely felt at home in your own house. ’

“There was some one here who seemed a little too much at home, Mrs. Sinclair—some one who will find my presence a good deal more awkward If I should happen to find him here again. In plain words, I forbid you to receive Sir Cyprian Davenant in my house.” “I can no more close my doors upon Sir Cyprian Davenant than on any other visitor,“ replied Constance, “and I do not choose to insult an old friend of my family for the gratification of your senseless jealousy. “Then you mean to defy me?” “There is no question of defiance. I shall do what 1 consider right, without reference to this absurd fancy of yours. Sir Cyprian is not very likely to call upon me again unless you cultivate his acquaintance. ” “I am not very likely to do that,” Gilbert answered, savagely. His wife’s quiet defiance baffled him, and he could find nothing more to say for himself. But this jealousy of Sir Cyprian was in no manner abated by Constance’s self-possession. He remembered the fainting fit in the morningroom at Davenant, and he was determined to find some means of punishing her for her tecrej preference for this man. An ugly notion flashed across his mind, by and by, as he saw her with her child lying in her lap. bending over the infant with a look of supreme affection. “She can find love for everything in the world except me,” he said to himself, bitterly. He had ceased to care for the child after the first month or so of its existence, being inclined to resent its sex as a personal injury, and disliking his wife's devotion to the in- 1 fant, which seemed to make her indifference to himself all the more obvious. |TO BE CONTINUED. |