Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1897 — A WOMANS HEART [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A WOMANS HEART

BY FLORENCE MARYATT

CHAPTER XlX.—(Continued.) “Bat for a child like you, Rosie, to lire alone and work for yourself! It i« incomprehensible, and it is very dangerous.” “Dear Wilfrid, I will never return to Lambs cote Hall.” “AH right, Rosie! I will not ask you again. I have made a great mistake in life, and I must bear the consequences of It by myself. But, at all events, you will not deny me the occasional pleasure and comfort of your society. You have found friends in London. Who are they? Where are you living, and with whom?” At this question, which Rosie had foreseen that sooner or later she must answer, she colored painfully. “Surely, Rosie, you are not ashamed to tell me?” “Ashamed! I should think not. I am only too proud of my friends, and all that they have done for me. Fancy, Wilfrid, people so poor as to have to work for their own bread, taking me in when I threw myself on fheir protection, without a word of remonstrance, without a question as to whether I should ever be able to contribute my share toward the family expenses. Fancy their sheltering me then and there, receiving me into the house as a sister or a daughter, supporting me until I was able to support myself, nursing mo in sickness, comforting me in sorrow, and asking nothing, positively nothing, in return?” “I can hardly fancy it, Rosie. Such open handedness is beyond the imagination of the nineteenth century.” “But it is true—every word of it is true. She has been the dearest friend and sister to me that ever an unhappy girl was fortunate enough to light upon. She has taught me how to bear my trouble, and where to look for comfort. She has borne with my fits of impatience, with my ” “She—she—who is she?” demanded Sir Wilfrid, with a smile. “I thought I owed my debt of gratitude to a whole family, Rosie, but they seem to have dwindled down into one.” “They are n family.” replied the girl, more composedly. “There is her mother, and Miss Prosser, and little Nellie. But the friend I spoke of, the one who has been all the world to me, Wilfrid, since you saw me last, is the daughter of your old landlady, Jane Warner.” For a moment Rosie Ewell was almost frightened at the effect which this name seemed to have upon her brother. As she pronounced it he rose suddenly from the chair on which lie was sitting, and stood gnzing at her with a fixed countenance, as if he could not believe that he had heard aright. Then the dark blood tame pouring over his handsome face in a torrent of shame, until his very eyeballs were suffused with it. He was suffering an agony of suspense. With the unexpected knowledge that his sister had been living for nearly two years with the woman he had deserted, came the conviction that she must know all—Jane would surely have told her. For men cannot believe that where their hearts are concerned women are as reticent as themselves. He could not find a voice in which to express his surprise. He could only murmur, “Jane! —Jane Warner!” under his breath, as if the intelligence were too wonderful to believe. Rosie mistook his emotion for anger. “Dear Wilfrid,” she commenced, “you are not angry with me, are you? I know that you had some misunderstanding with Jane, and forbade me to mention her name In your hearing, but that was so long ago, you surely must have forgotten it now. And she has been so good to me—l cannot tell you all her goodness. She is an Ongel, if ever there was one.” “And you have been living nil this time with Jane Warner, at Chelsea?” he said, passing his hand over his brow, like a man In a dream. “It is incredible! Does Jane ever mention me?” “Never! unless it is to warn me.” “How to warn you?” “Against doing anything that may displease you, Wilfrid. Sometimes she says, ‘Your brother might not like it.’ ‘Your brother might disapprove,’ but that is all. She made me take the name of ‘Fraser,’ in order to save you from annoyance. Jane Is always thinking of others instead of herself.” “Rosie,” said her brother, after a pause, “I suppose I can come and see you at Wolsey Cottage?” “You ought to be able to answer that question yourself, dear. I know of no objection, if you don't. But perhaps it would be better to ask Jane’s leave first.” “Will you ask her for me?” “What am 1 to say?” “That I want to visit you sometimes. That will be sufficient.” “Very well,” said Rosie, rising; “I will ask her, and tell you what she says.” CHAPTER XX. Wilfrid Ewell of Somerset House trembled when his cab drew up at the gate of Wolsey Cottage and he believed that in another moment he should stand face to face with Jane Warner. But his emotion was premature. No one opened the door to him but Caroline. She stared at him when he gave her his name as if she had never seen a gentleman before, and ushered him into the dining room, where his sister was waiting to receive him. She rose fuil of delight at his appearance, and they greeted each other with the same effusiveness they had displayed before. “Let us go and have a turn around the garden!” he exclaimed. “I used to love the old garden in my ’green sallet’ days. Many a day's work have I done in it, training the creepers and potting the slips. Colne, Rosie, this room is too hot for comfort. Come and have a look at the lilies!” But the old garden was deserted, bleak and bare. The snowdrops and crocuses in the borders were the only flowers visible, and they were, not worth looking at in the gray veil of dusk. Sir Wilfrid soon had enough of the garden. And while these events had been passing below, Jane Warner had been in her own room, with the door looked against all intruders, weeping passionately over the bed of the sleeping child. After the lapse of a few hours Sir Wilfrid's vanity was quite ready to make him believe that the fact of his not having seen Jane on the occasion of his first visit to Chelsea was merely attributable to aceideut. But when weeks elapsed without his encountering her—when lie had paid three and four visits to the cottage and Jane had never once appeared in the sitting room, he could no longer lay that flattering unction to his soul. He saw that her avoidance of him was intentional, and he grew moody and restless in consequence. At last Sir Wilfrid confided his trouble to Rosie, and enlisted her aid. “It is nonsense. Jane Warner and I playing at hide-and-seek in this manner,” he said. “Can’t you think of some plan to bring us together without compromigyourself. Rosie? If I could only set

her and speak to her, I am sure it would be all right. But it will be impossible for me to go on visiting here as an intruder, whom the mistress of the house refuses to recognize. It must be one or the other, Rosie. Either 1 must be friends with Jane, or I must give up coming to see you.’And Rosie who would have gone through tire and water rather than lose the pleasure of her brother's society, promised to keep her ears and eyes open, and effect a meeting between him and Jane Warner if possible. In compliance with which, about a week afterward, he received the following epistle: "Dearest Wilfrid —Do you know the place they call the Old Dairy Farm, about a couple of miles from this on the Middlebridge Road ? She is going there to-morrow afternoon, if fine, to get butter and eggs. She will take the child and perambulator with her. She will start about two or half-past, and be returning about four. “Ever your affectionate “ROSIE.” This intelligence threw Sir Wilfrid into a state of greatest excitement. Had he been obliged to parade for hours up and down the Middlebridge Road, he would have done so in order to get speech of Jane W arncr. He could not imagine how he could have waited for two years for news of her. Supposing she had died in the interim, what a lifelong reproach it would have been to him! All he wanted to know regarding her was, if she was happy and at peace. Assured of this, he would be ready to follow her wishes in everything. That is what he persuaded himself. It was a beautiful spring day now, in the middle of April. The limetrees that ghaded the paths on the Middlebridge Road had put forth their tender leaves of greeu, the quickest hedges were full of shoots: above his head the birds wesel l wheeling in their giddy courtships. Bv-, erything smelled so fresh and sweet, and’ looked so rural, that it was difficult to believe one was within a mile of onp of the busiest suburbs of London. Sir Wilfrid sauntered along,” coating a look over his shoulder every minute to see if the person of whom lie was in search were yet in sight. At last he saw her coming. He was sure he'cou’d not be mistaken in the tall, graceful figure, pushing the perambulator in front of her.' A little less distance between them, and he was certain it was Jane. He could recognize the swan-like elegance of her neck and head—could even catch the tones of her soft, rich voice as she addressed some words to the child in the perambulator. chapteiTxxi. Jane looking up, encountered, to her consternation. Sir Wilfrid Ewell. He was gazing at her fixedly, with a look of the utmost melancholy, and as his eyes met hers they seemed to take her breath away. She stopped short in the pathwny and bent her head over the perambulator. "Jane,” he began, in a low voice, “are we never to be friends again?” "I have always been your friend,” she answered, with a trembling lip. “But you reruse to see me ur speak to me. You absent yourself whenever I enter the cottage. You have no hesitation in showing that my presence is distasteful to you.” “What is the use of speaking or seeing?” she said, in a tone sharp with pain. “What good can it do? It can only make the past more bitter to remember, the present more difficult to bear?” “Then you have felt it, dear? you do feel it still? Regret is as keen with you as with myself.” “It can never be that, Will, for I never injured you.” “I know. Forgive me. But let me still remain your friend.” “To what end? It cannot undo the past. It cannot even ameliorate it. We are separated by your own free will. Let me go on my way for the future unmolested.” “I cannot. You do not know what this separation has cost me, how bitterly I hare repented it. Oh, Jane! I am so miserable! I have not a friend—worthy the name —to look to but yourself.” At last she raised her eyes with astonishment and stared him in the face. Pity —the loveliest vittue in the composition of woman—thrilled her through, and effaced for a moment the memory of her own wrongs. “Not a friend!” she ejaculated, “with your mother and sisters, and—and—the person you call Lady Ewell? Why, what has become, then, of all the friends for whom you deserted me?” “They were not deserving of the name, Jane. Haa not Rosie told you of the unfortunate relations between my—l mean, between Lady Ewell and myself? We are not living together. It is very probable we shall never live together again. I was blinded, Jane, by an insane passion for her beauty, and my Nemesis has come upon me sooner than I thought.” “It comes to most of us,” she answered, quietly. “What a pretty child!” remarked Sir ■Wilfrid, for the first time observing the occupant of the perambulator. “Whose is she?” “Whose is she?” repeated Jane in a startled voice—“whose is she? Why, she’s an adopted child of mother’s. We never heard the name of her parents. We found her.” "Found her! What an extraordinary thing to do!” said Sir Wilfrid. “Is it? I thought it happened every day in London. Some one put her over the garden wall, and we kept her. We couldn’t have done anything else, could we?” “A very pretty child!” repeated Sir Wilfrid, contemplatively. He was right. The little foundling had developed into a lovely specimen of infancy. She was now about two years, and had just learned to talk and run. “You seem to hare a faculty for taking burdens on yourself, Jane,” remarked Sir Wilfrid. “First, your poor mother, then my truant sister, and now this little orphan. You must have enough to do with them all.” “I did not lake thorn: tfcc.v were sent me,” she answered, and she folded Nellie’s wrappings closer round her, and went on her homeward journey. They had by this time reached the streets, and the time for confidence and emotion was over. Jane breathed more freely as she trod the pavement. The walk along the country road had been a fearful trial to her. “Jane,” said Sir Wilfrid, as they neared the cottage, “what do you intend to do?” “I do not understand you.” “What plans have you made for the future?” “None. I have my daily work to perform, and I leave the future to God.” • “I have not quite spoiled your life, 1 have I?” he whispered. “It ia not in the oower of a mortal to

■poil the life of another, Will,” she Mid. “I am content that mine ahoold be aa it ia. Too moat be content with the knowledge.” “That is jaat what I have been longing to hear you teH me,” he exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction, “that you are happy and contented. You hare indeed lifted a load from my mind. Jane. I shall go home and sleep as I hgve not slept for weeks past.” Still selfishly thinking of himself and his own comfort —still selfishly unmindful of her and the sea of tears through which she had waded in her present state of calm. Still unsuspicious that the calm was all assumed, and that in granting him leave to meet her aa a friend, Jane Warner had only added one more to the many sacrifices of self which should shine as jewels in her spiritual crown. When they reached the garden gate of Wolsey Cottage, Bir Wilfrid murmured, “May I come in?” and she answered, “Not to-day,” with a hurried manner that seemed almost unkind. He felt it, but he did not remonstrate with her. He wanted to prove, if possible, on this first occasion of their rehnion, how ready he was to give in to all her wishes. Still with the idea of pleasing Jane, took a sovereign from his pocket, and heid it toward the child. “Will baby buy a dolly?’ he said. Little Nellie made a grab at the glittering coin, but Jane Warner intercepted the offered gift, and turned upon the donor with a dignity of manner that made her -almost majestic. “I will not allow her to take it,” she said firmly; “and please to understand, Sir Wilfrid Ewell, that if you wish to visit at this house vou must never again make the mistake of offering any sort of present to me, or to —to the child.” Jane Warner was very silent and depressed that evening. She could not make up her mind whether she had acted wisely or not. And yet, since she was the only one likely to suffer from their renewed intercourse, was it not her duty to do all in her power to help and succor this man, so much more unhappy, because so much more guilty, than herself? (To be continued.!