Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — UNITED AT LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNITED AT LAST

BY MISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER XVlll—Continued. For some minutos—three or four, perhaps, and so brief a space of time makes a longish pause in a critical situation—Gilbert Sinclair kept silence. Sir Cyprian, stand ng with his hack against one end of the ve vet-covered mantel-pie 'e. waited with po.ite tranquillity-. Not by a wor dor gesture did he attempt to hurry his guest. “Look you here,' Sir Cyprian.” Gilbert began, at last, with savage abruptness. “If we had lived in the dueling days—the only days when'Englishmen were gentlemen-I have sent a friend to you 10-night instead of coming myself, and the business might have been arranged in the easiest manner possible and settled decisively before breakfast to -mono w. But as our new civilization does, notallow of that kind of thing, and as I haven't quite strong enough evidence to go into the divo ce court, I thought it was better to come straight to you and give you fair warning of what y, u may expect in the future.” "Let us suppose that dueling is not an exploded custom. We have France and Belgium and a few other countries at our disposal if we should make up our minds to fight. But I should like to know the ground of our quarrel before we go into details. ” “I am glad you are man enough to fight me,” answered the other, savagely. “I don't think you can require to be told why I should‘like to kill you; or, if you have been in doubt about it up to this moment, you will know pretty clearly when I toll you that I saw jump off the balcony of my wife's sum-mer-house this afternoon. ” “I am sorry that unceremonious exit should offend you. I had no other way of getting back to Marehbrook in time for my train. I should have had to walk the whole width of Davenant Park and about a mile of high-road, if I had left by the summer-house doo-.” “And you think it a gentleman-like thing to be in my neighborhood for a fortnight, to avoid my house, and to meet my wife clandestinely in a lonely corner of my parxL “There was no clandestine meeting. You insult your wife by such a supposition, and pro e—if proof were needed of so obvi' us a fact—your unworthiness of such awi e. My visit to the summer-house was purely accidental. I heard Mrs. Sinclair singing—heard the bitter cry which grief—a mother’s sacred^gt-ief—wrung from her in her solitude, and followed the impulse of the moment which prompted me to console a lady whom I knew and loved when she was a child.” “And afterwards, when she had ceased to be a child—a few months before she became my wife. Your attachment was, pretty well known to the world in general, I believe. It was only I who was left in ignorance. ” “Lou rdight easily have known what the world knew—-all there was to be known—simply nothing.” “You deny that you have done me any wrong? that I have any right to ask you to fight me?” “Most emphatically, and I most distinctly refuse to make a quarrel on any ground connected with your wi e. But you will not find me slow to reseqt an insult should you be so ill-advised a* to provoke me. As the friend of Constance Clanvarde I shall be ever ready to take np the cudgels for Constance Sinclair, even against her husband. Remember this, Mr. Sinclair, and remember that any wrong done to Lord Clanvarde s daughter will be a wrong that I shall revenge with all the power God has given me. She is not left solely to her husband’s tender mercies. ”

Even the dull red hue faded from Gilbert Sinclair's cheeks as he confronted the indignant s eaker, and left him livid to the very lips. There was a dampness on his forehead, too, when lie brushed his large, strong hand across it. “Is this man a craven?" thought Sir Cyprian, remarking these signs of agitation and fear. “ Well,” said Sinclair, drawing a long ; breath. “I suppose there is no mire to !be said. You both tell the same story | —an innocent meeting, not precon-certed-mere accident. Yes, you have the best of me this time. The unlucky hu-band generally has the worst of it. There's no dishonor in lying to him. He's out of court, poor be’ggar. ” “Mr. Sinclair, do you want me to throw you out of that window?" “[ sh uldn t much care if you did.” Thete was a sullen misery m the answer and in the very look of the man as he sat there beside his enemy’s hearth in the attitude of dull apathy, only.looking up at intervals from his vacant staie at the lire, which touched Cyprian Davenant with absolute pity-. Here was a man to whom Fate had given vast capabilities of happiness, and who had wantonly thrown away all that is fairest and best in life. “Mr. Sinclair, upon my honor, I am sorry for you,” he sail, gravely. "Sorry for.your incapacity to teiieve in a n - hie and pure-minded wife: sorry that | you should poison your own life and your wife’s by doubts that would ne .br enter your mind if you had the power to understand her. *Go home, and let your wife never know the wrong you have done her. ” “My wife! What wife? I have no wife, - ’ said Sinclair,” with a strange smile, rising and going to the door. “That's what some lellow says in a play, I think. Good-night, Sir Cyprian Davenant, and when next we meet I hope it may be on a better-defined footing.” He left the room without ano her word. Before Sir Cyprian’s bell had summoned the smoatn-htced valet, the street door shut with a bang, and Gilbert Sinclair was adfib: Sir Cyprian heard the doors of the hansom (fiapp; d to. and thb smack of the w6ary driver s whip, as the wheels rolled up'the silent street. “What did he mean by that speech about his wife?*' won Bred Sin Cyprian. “The man looked like a murderer!” Be did not know that at this moment' Gilbert Sinclair was half afraid that brutal blow of his might have bean fatal.

CHAPTER XIX. MBS. WAnSIN'OHAM BREAKS FAITH. Christmas, which, in a c mm *n way, brings life and bustle, and tne gathering of many guests to gjod old country housrs, brought tn y gloom and solitude to Lavenant. Mr. Sinclair’s visitors had depai te 1 suddenly, at a single flight, like swallows le ore a storin';n autumn. Mrs. Sinclair was very ill—seriously ill—mysteriously ill. ‘ Her dearest friends shook t:e'r heads and looked aw,ul tnings when they talked other. It was menta', they feaiod. “Poor dear tkiig! Th.s comes of Lord Clanyarde s s oediness in getting rich husbands or all his daughters.” “The <id man is a regular harpy,” exclaimed Mr . Millanount, witu a charming indiffe -once to detail. And then these fashionable swallows skimmed away to fresh woods and pastures new—or rather fresh billiardroom* and other afternoon teas, evening part songs and morning rides in rustic English lanes, whete there is beauty and fragrance oven in midwinter. Constance had been missing at afternoon tea on the day of Gilbert s sudden journey to but her absence in the co y morning-room where Mrs. Millamount amused the circle by the daring eccentricity of her discourse was hardly a subject of wonder. “She has one of h r nervous headaches, no doubt, poor child,” said Mrs. Millamount, taking possession of the tea-tray: “she is just the k ndof woman to have nervous headaches.” “I’ll give long odds you don't have them,” said Sir Thomas Houndslow, who was lolling with his back against the mantelpiece to the endangerment of the porcelain that adorned it. “Never had headache but once in my life; and that was when I came a cropper in the Quorncountry, ” replied Mrs. Millamount, graciously. Vapors have given way to feminine athletics, and there is nothing now so dowdy or unfashionable as bad heath. When the dressing-ball rang and Miss Sinclair was sti.l absent, Melanie Dupont began to think there was some cause for alarm. Her mi-tress was punctual a d orderly in all her habits. She had gone to walk in the park immediately after luncheon, quite three hours ago. She had no idea of going beyond the park, Meanie knew, and she only wcfi - e her seal-skin jacket and a garden hat. She might have gone to Marehbrook, perhaps, in this careless attire, but not anywhere else, and her visits to Marehbrook were very rare. Melanie was puzzled. She went down stairs and sent a couple of grooms in quest of her mistress. The ga-den-ers had all gone homo at 5 o’clock. “You had better look in the summerhouse by the fir plantation." said Melanie. “I know Mrs. Sinclair spends a deal of her time th Te. The young men took the hint and went straignt off to the summer-house together, too s c’al to take different directions, as Melanie had told them to do. They had p’enty to talk about —the way their master was going it, the i ad luck which hid attended hi-; racing stable lately, and so on. “1 think there's a curse on them buildings at Newmarket,” said one of the men. “We haven't pulled off so much as a beggarly plate since they was tin shed.”

“There’s a curse on buying* half--breed colts,” retorted the older and wiser servant. “There's where the curse is. Rogers—mistaken economy.” The classic temple was wrapped in darkness, and Rogers, who entered first, stumbled over the prostrate form of his mistress. She lay just’ as she had fallen at her husband's feet,'felled by his savage blow. The elder man got a light but of his fusee box, and then they lifted the senseless figure into a chair and looked at the white face on which there were ghastly streaks of blood. Mrs. Sinclair groaned faintly as they rai-ed her from the ground, and this was a welcome sound, for they had almost thought her dead. There were some flowers in a vase on the table, and the elder groom dipped a handkerchief in the water and dabbed it cn Mrs. Sinclair's forehead, “J wish I'd got a drop of spirit in my pocket,” he said: “a sup of brandy might bring her round, perhap*. Look about if you can se.e anything in that way, Rogers." Rogers looked, but alcohol being au nnhnown want to Mrs. Sinclair there was no convenient bottle to be found in the summer-house. She murmured something inarticulate, and the locked lips loosened and trembled faintly as the groom bathed her forehead. “Poor thing, she must have had a fit,” said the e.der man. “Apocalyptic, perhaps,” suggested Rogers. “We’d better carry her back to the house between us. She's only a featherweight, poor little thing.” So the two grooms conveyed Mrs. Sinclair gently and carefully back to Davenant, and contrived to carry her up to her room by the servants’ staircase without letting all the house into the secret. “If it was a fit, she won’t like it talked about,” said the head groom to the housekeeper, as he refreshed himself with a glass of Glenlivet after his exertions.

“Master’s gone up to London, too,” said the' housekeeper; “that makes it awkward, don’t it? I should think somebody ought to telegraph.” Melanie Duport took charge of her mistress with a self-possession that would have done credit to an older woman. She sent oil at once for Dr. Webb, who came post-haste to his. most important patient. The Doctor found his patient weak and low, and her mind wapdpring a little. He wa3 much puzzled by that contusion on. the fair forehead, but Constance could give him no explanation. < “I think I fell,” 9he .-aid. “It was kind of him to c >me to me, wasn't it, for the love of o d times.” “It must have boen a very awkward fall,” sail Dr. Webb to Melanie. “Where did it happen'''” Melanie explained how her mistress had been found in the summer-house. “She must have fallen against some piece of furniture, something with a blunt edge. It was an awful blow. She is very low, poor thing. The system has received a severe shook. ” And then Dr. Webb enjoined tho greatest of care, and questioned Melanie as to her qualifications for tho post of nurse. Mrs. Sinclair was not to be left all night, and some one else must be got to-morrow to relievo Melan e. It was altogether a serious case. Gilbert Sinclair returned next meaning, haggard and gloomy, lo iking like a man who had spent a night at ths gaming table with fortune steadily adverse to him. He met Dr. Webb in the hall, and was told that his wife «vas seriously ill. ** *• “ Not in danflror v ” he a iked, eagerly.

“Not In Immediate danger.* “I thank God for that." it seemed a small thing to be thankful for, since the surgeon’s tongue was not very hopeful, but Gilbert Sinclair had been weighed down by the apprehension of something worse than this. He found James Wyatt alone In the billiard-room, and learned from him that his guests were already on the wing. Three days later and Mr. Wya t had also left Davenant, but not for good. He had promised to run down again in a week o.* so, and to cheer his dear friend, who, although always treating him more or less de haut en has. allowed him to see pretty plainly that he was indispensable to his patron's contentment. And your modern Umbra will put up with a good deal of snubbing when ho knows his patron is under his thumb. |TO BE CONTINUED. I