Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1894 — UNITED LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNITED LAST

BY MISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER XIV. SIR CTPBIAN HAS HIS SUSPICIOUS. Sir Cyprian Davenant had not forgotten that dinner at Richmond given by Gilbert Sinclair a little while before his departure for Africa, at which he had met the handsome widow to wham Mr. Sinclair was then supposed to be engaged. The fact’ was brought more vividly back to his mind by a circumstance that came under his notice the evening after he had accepted Lord Clanyarde's invitation to Marchbrook. He had been dining at his club with an old college friend, and had consented, somewhat unwillingly, to an adjournment to one of the theaters near the Strand, at which a popular burlesque was being played for the three hundred and sixty-fifth time. Sir Cyprian entertained a cordial detestation of this kind of entertainment, in which the low comedian of the company enacts a distressed damsel in short petticoats and a flaxen wig, while pretty actresses swajger in costumes of the cavalier period, and ape the manners of the mu-dc-hall swell. But it was 10 o’clock. The friends had recalled all the old Oxford follies in the days when they were under-graduates together in Tom Quad. They had exhausted these reminiscences and a magnum of Lafitte, and though Sir Cyprian would have gladlv gone back to his chambers and his books, Jack Dunster, his friend, was of a livelier temperament, and wanted to finish the evening. “Let s go and see ‘Hercules and Ompha e at the Kaleidoscope," he said. “It’s no end of tun. Jeem-on plays Omphale in a red wig, and Minnie Vavasour looks awfully fascinating in pink satin boots and lion-skin. We shall be just in time for the breakdown.” Sir Cyprian assented with a yawn. He had seen fifty such burlesques as “Hercules and Omphale” in the days when such things had their charm for him, too, when he could be pleased with a pretty girl in pank satin hessians, or be moved to laughter by Jeemson’s painted nose and falsetto scream.

They took a hansom and drove to the Kaleidoscope, a bandbox of a theater screwed into an awkward corner of one of the narrowest streets in London—a street at which well-bred carriage horses accusto ned to the broad thoroughfares of Belgravia shied furiously. It was December, and there was no one worth speaking of in town; but the little Kaleidoscope was crowded, notwithstanding. There were iust a Brace of empty stalls in a draughty corner for Sir Cyprian and Mr. Dunster. The breakdown was just on, the pretty little Hercules flourishing his club, and exhibiting a white round arm with a diamond bracelet above the elbow. Omphale was showing her ankles, to the delight of the groundlings, the violins were racing one another, and the flute squeaking its shrillest in a vulgar negro melody, accentuated by rhythmical bangs on the big drum. The audience were in raptures, and rewarded the exertions of band and dancers with a double recall. Sir Cyprian stifled another yawn and looked around the house. Among the vacuous countenances, all intent on the spectacle, there was one face which was out of the common, and which expressed a supreme weariness. A lady sitting alone in a stage box, with one rounded arm resting indolently on the velvet cushion —an arm that might have been carved in marble, bare to the elbow, its warm, human ivory relieved by the yellow hue of an old Spanish point rufne. Where had Cyprian Davenant tee a that face before? The lady had passed the first bloom of youth, but her beauty was of that character that does not fade with youth. She wa i of the Pauline Borghese type, a woman worthy to be modeled by a new Canova. “I remember,” said Sir Cyprian to himself. “It was at that Richmond dinner that I met her. She is the lady Gilbert Sinclair was to have married. ” He felt a curious interest in this woman, who-e name even he had forgotten. Why had not Sinclair married her? she was strikingly handsome, with a bolder, grander beauty than Constance Clanyarde's fragile and poetic loveliness —a woman whom such a man as Sinclair might have natural 'y chosen. Just as such a man would choose a high-stepping chestnut horse, without being too nice as to fineness z and delicacy of line. “And I think from the little I saw that the lady was attached to him," mused Sir Cyprian. He glanced at the stage-box several times before the end of the performance. The lady was quite alone, and sat in the same attitude, fanning herself languidly, and hardly looking at the stage. J ust as the curtain fell, Sir Cyprian heard th.e click of the box door, and looking up,Jsaw that a gentleman ri ad entered. The lady rose, and he camt forward a little to assist in the arrangement of her erminelined mantle. The gentleman was Gilbert Sinclair. “What do you think of it?” asked Jnck Dunster, as they went out into the windy lobby, where people were crowded together waiting for their carriages. “Abominable,” murmured Sir Cyprian. "Why, Minnie Vavasour is the prettiest actress in London, and Jeemson’s almost equal to Toole. “I bog your pardon. I was not thinking of the burlesque,” answered Sir Cyprian, hastily. . Gilbert and his companion were just in front of them. “Shall I go and look for your carriage?” asked Mr. Sinclair. “If y< u like. But as you left me to sit out this dreary rubbish by myself all the evening, you might just as well have let me find my way to my carriage. ” “Don’t be angry with me for breaking my engagement. I was obliged to go out shooting with some fellows, and I didn’t leave Maidstone till nine o’clock. I think I paid you a considerable compliment In traveling thirty

miles to hand you to your carriage. No other woman could expect so much from me." “You are not going back toDavenant to-night.” “No; there Is a supper on at the Albion. Lord Colsterdale’s trainer is to be there, and I expect to get a wrinkle or two from him. A simple matter of business, I assure you.” "Mrs. Walsingham’s carriage:” roared the waterman. “Mrs. Walsingham," thought Sir Cyprian, who was squeezed into a corner with bis friend, walled up by opera-cloaked shoulders, and within ear-shot of Mr. Sinclair. “Yes, that's her name. ” “That saves you all trouble," said Mrs. Walsingham. “Can I set you down anywhere?” “No, thanks; the Albion’s close by." Sir Cyprian struggled out of his corner just in time to see Gilbert shut the brougham door and walk oft through the December drizzle. “So that acquaintance is not a dropped one,” he thought "It augurs ill for Constance. ” Three days later he was riding out Barnet way, in a quiet country lane, as rural and remote in aspect as an accommodation road in the shires, when he passed a brougham with a lady in it —Mrs. Walsingham s carriage again, and again alone. “This looks like fatality,” he thought He had been riding Londonward, but turned his horse and followed the carriage. This solitary drive, on a dull, gray winter day. so far from London, struck him as curious. There might be nothing really suspicious in the fact. Mrs. Walsingham might have friends in this northern district. But after what he had seen at the Kaleidoscope. Sir Cyyrian was inclined to suspect Mrs. Walsingham. That she still cared for Sinclair he was assured. He had seen her face light up when Gilbert entered the box; he had seen that suppressed anger which is the surest sign of a jealous, exacting love. Whether Gilbert still cared for her was another question. His meeting her at the theater might have been a concesdon to a dangerous woman rather than a spontaneous act of devotion. Sir Cyprian followed the brougham into the sequestered village of Totteridge, where it drew up before the garden gate of a neat cottage with green blinds and a half-glass door—a cottage which looked like the abode of a spinster annuitant; Here Mrs. Walsingham alighted and went in, opening the half-gla : s door with the air of a person accustomed to enter. He rode a little way further, and then walked his horse gently back. The brougham was still standing before the garden gate, and Mrs. Walsingham was walking up and down a gravel path by the side of the house with a woman and a- child—a child in a scarlet hood, just able to toddle along the path, sustained oh bach - side by a supporting hand. ■' “Some poor relation's child, perhaps," thought Cyprian. “A friendly visit on the lady’s part” He had ridden further than he intended, and stopped at a little inn to five his horse a feed of corn and an our’s rest, while he strolled through the village and looked at the old-fash-ioned church-yard. The retired spot was not without its interest. Yonder was Coppet Hall, the place Lord Melbourne once occupied, and which had, later, passed intAthe, possession of the author of that splendid series of brilliant and various novels which reflect as in a magic mirror all the varieties of life from the age of Pliny to the eve of the Franco-Prussian war. “Who lives in that small house with the green blinds?” asked Sir Cyprian, as he mounted his horse to ride home.

“It’s been took furnished, sir, by a lady from London for her nurse and baby. ” "Do you know the lady’s name?” “I can’t say that I do, sir. They has their beer from the brewer, and pays ready money for everythink. But I see the lady s brougham go by not above ’alf an hour ago." “Curious,” thought Sir Cyprian. “Mrs. Walsingham is not rising in my opinion. ” CHAPTER XV. “THEY LIVE TOO LONG WHO HAPPINESS OUTLIVE.” in accepting Lord Clanyarde’s invitation, Cyprian Davenant had but one thought, one motive —to be near Constance. Not to see her. He knew that such a meeting could bring with it only bitterness for both. But he wanted to ce near her, to ascertain at once and forever the whole unvarnished truth as to her domestic life, the extent of her unhappiness, if she was unhappy. Rumor might exaggerate. Even the practical solicitor James Wyatt might represent the state of affairs as worse than it was. The human mind leads to vivid coloring and bold dramatic effect. An ill-used wife and a tyrannical husband present one of those powerful pictures which society contemplates with interest. Society represented generally by Lord Dundreary likes to pity just as it likes to wonder. At Marchbrook Sir Cyprian was likely to learn the truth, and to Marchbrook he went, affecting an interest in pheasants, and in Lord Clanyarde’s conversation, which was like a rambling and unrevised edition of the "Greville Memoirs, ” varied with turf reminiscences. There was wonderfully fine weather in that second week of December—clear autumnal days, blue skies, and sunny mornings. The pheasants were shy, and after the first day Sir Cyprian left them to their retirement, preferring long, lonely rides among the scenes of his boyhood, and half-nours of friendly chat with ancient gaffers and goodies who remembered his fattier and mother, and the days when Davenant had still held up its head in the occupation of the old race. "This noo gentleman, he do spend a power o’ money; but he’ll never be looked up to like old Sir Cyprian,” said the gray-haired village sage, leaning over his gate to talk to young Sir Cyprian. In one of his rounds Cyprian Davenant looked in upon the abode of Martha Briggs, who was still at home. Her parents were in decent circumstances, and not eager to see their daughter “suited” with a new service. Martha remembered Sir Cyprian as a friend of Mrs. Sinclair’s before her marriage. She had seen them out walking together in the days when Constance Clanyarde was still in the nursery; for Lord Clanyarde’s youngest daughter had known no middle stage between the nursery and her Majesty’s drawing-room. Indeed, Martha had had her own ideas about Sir Cyprian, and had quite made up her mind that Miss Constance would marry him. She was therefore disposed to be confidential, and with very slight encouragement told Sir Cyprian al! about

that sad time at Scnoenesthal, how her mistress had nursed her through a fever, and how the sweetest child that ever lived had been drowned through that horrid French girl's carelessness. “It's all very well to boast of jumping into the river to save the darling." exclaimed Martha; “but why did she go and take the precious pet into a dangerous place? When I had her, I could see danger beforehand. I didn t want to be told that a hill was steep, or that grass was slippery. I never did like foreigners, and now I hate them like poiscn." cried Miss Briggs, ss if under the impression that the whole continent of Europe was implicated in Baby Christabel's death. “it must have been a great grief to Mrs. Sinclair,” said Sir Cyprian. “Ab, poor dear, she‘ll never hold up her bead again," sighed Martha. “I saw her in church last Sunday, in the beautifulest black bonnet, and if ever I saw anyone going to heaven, it's her. And Mr. Sinclair will have a lot of company, and there are all the windows at Davenant blazing with light till ]>ast 12 o’clock every night—my cousin James is a pointsman on the Southeastern, and sees the house from the line—while that poor, sweet lady is breaking her heart.” “But surely Mr. Sinclair would defer to his wife in these things.” suggested Sir Cyprian. “Not he, sir. For the last twelve months that I was with my dear lad}' I seldom heard him say a kind word tc her. Always snarling and sneering. 1 do believe he was jealous of that precieus innocent because Mrs. Sinclair was so fond of her. I'm sure if it hadn’t been for that dear baby my mistress would have been a miserable woman.’ This was a bad hearing, and Sir Cyprian went back to Marchbrook that evening sorely depressed. ” |TO Bk CONTINUBD.I