Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — UNITED AT LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNITED AT LAST

MISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER XXV. r.EADT FOR THE WORST June roses Were opening in the flowergarden at Davenant. and Gilbert Sinclair bad been leading a life of the purest dcmesticity for the last three reeks. It hung lather hea ily upon tiim. that domestic life, for, though he oved his wife after his own fashion, he was not fond of home joys or exclusively feminine society. But what will not a jealous man endure when once his suspicions are aroused? Patient as the spider watching his prey, he waits for the unguarded moment which shall betray the horrid secret he fears yet longs to discover. Except to see Goblin win the Derby a feat which that estimable animal performed with honor to himself and satisfaction to every one save the bookmen -Gilbert had not been away from Davenant sinbe the Two Thousand. He had been told to look for treachery at home, and he was there ready to seize the traitor. No mouchard in the secret service of the Parisian police was ever a closer spy than the husband who doubts vet dotes, suspects yet fondly loves.

That he had seen nothing in all this time to confirm his doubts was noc enough to convince Mr. Sinclair that triose doubts were- baseless. He was willing to imagine profoundest hypocrisy in the wile of his bosom, a brazen frpnt under the semblance of a pure &pd innocent brow. Even the devotion tdher cjiild might be a cover fora guiltier love. Her happiness, her tranquility, gave him new ground for suspicion. Was there not some secret Well-spring of contentment, some hidden source of delight, masked behind this fair show of maternal affection? The e were the doubts which Gilbert Sinmair was perpetually revolving in his mind dur.ng this period of domestic bliss, and thii was tne aspect of affairs up to June 15. Ascot races were to begin on the llith, and Goblin was to fulfill his third great engagement. This was an occasion before which even a husban i’s jealous fear; must give way, and Gilbert had made up his mind to see the horse run. He had not carried out his idea of selling Goblin after the Derby. .Jackson, the trainer, had Crotestea vehemently against such a reach of faith with him, who had made the horse.

"That there ’o-s is to win the Leger,” said the indignant Jackson. “If he don’t I’ll eat him, pig-skin and all.” Gilbert felt that to part with such a horse for ever so high a price would be to cut up the goose that laid the golden eggs. ■ "A horse can't go on winning great races forever, though. There must come a turn in the tide,” suggested Gilbert, sagely. “We should get a pot of money for him now.” ■ “A gentleman couldn’t sell a 'oss that had just won him the blue ribbon of» the turf,” replied Jackson, with a burst of chivalrous feeling. “It would be to> mean. ” Gilbert gave way to the finer feelings of his trainer, and took no step toward cutting short his career on the turf. Things were looking livelier in the coal-pit district, he told himself, and a fe.w thousand a year moie or less could not hurt him. He would carry out his original idea, take a place somewhere near Newmarket, and establish his wife and—the child there. Under ordinary circumstances he would ha. e taken a house at Ascot during th > race week for the accommodation of himself and a selection of choice spirits with sportmg tastes, where toe nights might have been enlivened by blind hookey, or poker, or some equally enlightened lecreaticn. But on this occasion Mr. Sinclair made no such comfortable arrangement, and determined to sleep at nis hotel in town oa the night aiter the race.

He was smoking his after dinner cigar on the evening of the loth, pae ng slowly op and down the terrace in front of the open drawing-room windows, when a servant brought him his letters. The first opened was from his trainer, who was in high spirits about Goblin. The next two or three were business letters of no importance. The last was irfa strange hand, a nigiling, scratchy little hand, which, if these be any expression in penmanship, was suggestive of a mean and crafty nature in t ie ■writer. Gilbert tore open the envelope, expecting to find some insinuating “tip” from a gentleman of the genus “tout ” but the letter was not even so honest as a tip: it was that snake in the grass, an anonymous warning: “It Mr. Sinclaire is away to-moro nitelhe wil mis an oportunitie to learn sumthing he ouht to kno. If he want's to kno a secret let im wattch the bal-I coaie of is wif’s room Ije win tenn and leven to-moro nite. A Friend.” Such a letter falling into the hands of a. generous-minded man would have aroused only contempt: but coming to a.man.who had given himself up as a prey to suspicion and iealousy, who had long been on the watch for domestic treachery, even this venomous i Crawl became significant as the voice of Fate—an oracle to be obeyed at anv cost. “She has taken advantage of my intended absence already, and has made an appointment with her lover,” thought Gilbert Sinclair. “This warning comes from one of my servants, I dare sky-- seme scullery-maid, who has found out my wife s infamv. and pities the doluried h-v.b*nd. Rather hard to swallow pfty Irom ibat quarter.” Then came the natua«d reaction. “Is it a hoax. 1 wonder a trick played up n me by some di missed under! eg? Yet how should any one know how to put his finger on the spot that galls? Lnless it were thats co undid Wyatt, who hates me like po son. Well, at least, I tap take the hint, and be on the watch. God help Cyprian Davenant if he cro-ses m, threshold tfith evil intent. He may have deceived me once. He shall not deceive M». Sinclair went to Ascot next day Bs he had intended. Any change in bis plans would have put his wife upon

1 her guard. He went to the races, look- ' ing uncommonly glum as his friends | informed him: so gloomy, indeed were his looks lhat sbtoe ot his intimatea ! made haste to hedge their bets about Gobrln, making very sure that the Derby winner had been seized by some I sudden indisposition. The event reI warded then- caution, for Goblin, alj though brought up to the starting post ■ in magnificent condition, failed to get I a place. Gilbert bore his disappointment with supreme stoicism. Goblin s . v ct- ry would not have made him smile; his failure hardly touched him. : It was provoking, of comse, but De--i tiny and Mr. Sinclair had long been at odes; it was only another item, a del to an old account. He drove to the station directly GobI lin’s race was over, and as there was ! another race to c me, he got a place in i th? t ain easily. It started immedi- . atelv, and he was in London before I 7 o'clock, and on his wav to Davenant at 8. He had not stopred to dine. A biscuit and a glass of brandy and soda I was al* he cared to take in his present i frame o' mind. It wag striking nine as he left the ; quiet litt'e Kentish station, not ouite i clear as to what his next step ought to I be. He had been told to watch his wife's room between 10 and 11. To do I this with any effect, he must get into I the house unol served or find a safe ■ post of observation in the garden. To 1 announce his return home would be, of ' course, to destroy his chance of makI ing any discovery: and by this time he i had made up his mind that there was , domestic treachery to be discovered, i As to the means, he cared little or i nothing. To meet treachery with j treachery could bs no dishonor. It was dusk, the swest summer dusk, j when he entered the park through a i gate seldom used by any one but the gamekeepers or servants. The nightingales were breaking out into sudden gushes of melody, calling and answerI ing one another from distant clumnsof ; chestnut or beach, but Mr. Sinclair took no heed of the nightingales. In , his happiest frame of mind that melodious jug-juggling would have maue no I particular impres,-ion upon his unsensii tive ear: to-night all senses were in mo eor less abeyance. He found his way along the narrow footpath mechan- ! ically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and only roused himtelf when he came within sight of the house.

How to get in unobserved and reach his room without meeting any of the servants was the question. A moments reflection showed him that this ought to be easy enough, i Half-past nine o'clock was the servants' supper hour at Davenant, and me ds in .the servants' hall are an institution which even domestic convulsions leave un-haken. A funeral makes I no difference in tho divine right of serv- ' ants to dine and sup at a certain hour; . a wedding may cause some suoererogatory feasting, but can hardly over- , throw the regular order of the dai'y meals. Mr. Sinclair had no fear, therei fore, of any alteration in the routine of the household, and he knew by experience that his servants liked to take ; their t me at the social evening meal, i It was twenty minute <to ten when ihe stopped for a minute or so in I the shrubbery to consider his plans. Between ten and eleven, said the anonymous letter. He had no time to lose. He skirted the lawn in front of the drawing room windows, ktaping in the shadow of the tree-;. The windows were all open, and he could tee the whole of the room. Lamps were burning on the table, candles on the piano, but his wife was not there. Ho went in at one of the window-,. Tho child s toys wero lying on the floor by Constance’s favorite chair, and an open work basket a little pile of books on a gypsy table, showed that the room had been lately occupied. “She ha; gone to the balcony-room to keep her appointment ’’ he thought, savagely, for by this time he had ac--1 copied the anonymous warning as a truth.

The hall was as empty as, the draw-ing-room, the lamps burned dimlv, being the last invention in lamps that do not illuminate. Gilbert went softly up the shallow old staircase to the corridor which ran the length of the house, and ended at the door of his own snuggery. He reached this door without meeting any one, went quietly into the room, and locked the door. The oriel-window of this room commanded the balcony room, -which was recessed in the southern front, between two projecting wings. There could be no better post of observation for the man who had boon told to watch the garden approach to his wife’s I'coms.

There were matches and candlei on the mantel-piece, but to strike a light would be to make his presence known to any one in the ba cony rocm, so Gilbert waited quiet y in the half darkness of a summer night, and found what he wanted easily enough by the sense of touch. There was no moon yet,- but a few stars were thiding faintly in the calm gray sky. The windows of the balcony room were dark, and one stood open—the one nearest the iron stair. Gilbert observed this. “She is sitting there in the dark,” he thought, “waiting for him. That dark room, that open window, lo.k like guilt. Whv has sne not her lamp lighted, aid her music or her books? Ao: she has something else to think of.” His guns were arranged in artistic order above the chimney-piece -a costly collection, with all the latest imorovements in sporting guns. His han,s wandered here and there among the stocks till they came to a favorite rille, the lightest in his collection and one of the surest. He had shot many a royal stag with it beyond the Tweed. He took down this gun, went to a drawer where he kept ammunition, and se-' lected it and loaded his gun in a steady, business like manner. There was no faltering of the hand that dropped the cartridge into its place, though that hand meant murder. “He refused to fight me,”i Gilbert Sinclair said to himself. “He lied to me until I was fool en ughtobelievd his lies. I gave him fair warning. He I has tricked and insulted me in the face iof that warning. He ha, entered my house once as an impostor and a liar. If he tries to enter it a second time as a thief and a seducer, his blocd be upon hi , own head.”

CHAtTBR XXVI. CAUGHT IX THE Toils Ten o'clock struck with sweet and solemn chime from the old square tower of the pari-h church,,Gilbert Sine air opened the lattice and stood by the open window of the dressingroom, waiting. Tjaere was not . a l-*af stirring in the garden, not a shadow save the motionless shadows of the trees. No light in the windows of the balcony room. The stars brightened in the clear gray, and in.the soft twi-

light of jotamer all things ware dimly defined—not dark, bit shadowy. The quarter chimed from the church tower behind the trees yonder, and still there was no movement in the garden. Gilbert stood motionless, his watch divided between the old Dutch garden with its geometrical floweroeds and stone sun dial, and the windows of the balcony room. As the sound of the church clock dwindled slow>y into silence, a light appeared in ths center window, a candle held in a woman’s hand, and raised above her head. Gilbert could but faintly distinguish the dark figure in the feeble glimmer of that single candle before figure and light vanished. A signal, evidently, for a minute latir a man's figure appeared from the angle of ihe hedge, where it had been hidden in shadow. A man tall, strongly bu It—yes. ju t the figure that pat-ent watcher expected—stepped lightly across the garden, carefully keeping to the narrow gravel-pat us, leaving no tell-tale footprint on flowerbed or box-border. He reached the iron stair, mountel it swi.tly, had his foot on the balcony, when Gilbert Sinclair fired, with the unerring aim of a practiced sportsman and the firm hand of a man who has made up his mind for the worst. The figure t eeled, swayed for a moment tn the topmost step, and rolled backward down the light iron stair, shaking it with the force of the fall, and sunk in a heap on the gravel-path below. Gilbert waited, expecting to be thrilled by a woman's piercing shriek, the despairing cry of a guilty soul, but no such cry came. All was darkness in the balcony room. He fancied he saw a figure approach the window and look out, but tvhatever that shape was it vanished before he could verify his d< übts. He went over to the chimney-piece an 1 put away his gun as coolly as if the purpose for which he had just used it were the most ordinary business of daily life, but this mechanical tranquillity had very little significance. ; It was rather tho stolidity of a slpepi walker tha i the calmness of a mind that realize 4 the weight and measure of its act. He went back to the window. There lay the figure, huddled iu a formless heap as it had fallen hid--00081- foreshortened from Gilbert’s point of sight. The open hands clutched the loose gravel. No sound, no light yet in the balconv room. “bho does nut know what has hap- ' pened,” said Gilbert, grimly. “I had better go a d tell her.” j He unlocked his door and went oht in the corridor. His wife s bedroom opened out of the balcony room. The child sleut in a smaller room adjoining ■ that. He went into the balc r ny robm and found it empty, then opened the ! bedroom door and paused on the ’ threshold. Io iking in.

Impossible to imagine a more peaceful picture than that which met the husband s eyes. A night-lamp shed a faint light over the white-curtained bjd, an open boo.c an I an extinguished candle on a little table by the bedside, showe I that Cons ante ha I read herself t > sleep. The door of the inner room stcod half epen, and Gilbert could see the litt'e white crib, and the sleeping child. The mother's face was hardly less placid in its repose than the child’s. |TO BE CONTINUED. |