Indiana State Sentinel, Volume 34, Number 52, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 January 1889 — Page 1

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VOL. XXXIY-NO. 52. INDIANAPOLIS, "WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 30, 1889. ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR.

UILDEROY

Author of "Under Two Flags," "Two' Little Wooden Shoos," "Chandos," "Don Gej-inldo," Etc. Sow fint published. A!l rishls werrol.) CHAPTER XLIII. The steamer meantime passed m its little voya.se through the still, frosty air and over the liquid darkness of the sea. Jladys, enwrapped in her black sables, stayed on dock insensible to the cold. stievps conscious of the febrile excitement within her, and of that ruomentary go! ace which 5? always found in any physical movement which relieves or distracts great anxiety. She went straight to Baris, and defended at a hotel instead of at the house which Guilderoy rented in the avenue de Bois, de Boulogne, and which was then shut up and left in charge of the Suisse. She did not wish her movements to be known to anyone. She inquired at the English embassy where l ord Guilderoy was. With some purpri.se and, she thou jht, some embarrassment, his friends there told her that they believed he was in Venice stiil; they had heard no change of address from him. H.e left them to think or conclude what 'hey hoe. and went to Venice as Aubrey bad done, before her. At bis palace, where they received her with obsequious deferens, she heard that he had left there three weeks before, but where he was they could not say ; he had left no addrs. Mit perceived that it was an excuse, a ?.::(. hood, but they were vX least loyal to the instructions they had received; she h i not try to bribe them into disobedience, which could eaKilv have been done, ii'' paused for a few days at the house, which 'Aas always kept in perfect reah-n-ss i.r his arrival. She thought it probable that he might return. It was cold in Venice, but it did not seem so to her alter the north winds which had been sweeping over the woods ami moors of Ladvsrood when she had h it it. The was radient; the green 'seals still tasked in light, the silvery !ago:ns ho re the little islands on their breasts, the Istrian brigs were unloading their 'cads of wood in the Giudecca, the Greek traders were landing their various carpves at the custom-house, the manycolored fleet of little fishing; vessels anchored off the Canaregglo and the Botanic gardens; the scene was always harming, various, gay a panorama of moving, noiseless, delicately-tinted life. he acknowledged its charm but. it made her heart almost heavier than it had been under the wintrv shadows and d'j'ky mists of Ladysrood. As she let the gondoliers take her over the water and thread their way with unerrir jr accuracy through the crowded craft of the Canale d'Orfano, she lived again every moment of the first weeks she had spent in Venice. All that passion spent on them eeemc! to her like a dream some remembered poem that could have nothing in common w ith her own life. Woman can never habituate herself to the early and abrupt cessation of all love's instincts and caresses, which to the man seems so natural and so inevitable. With her that fairy story should be told with the same ardor every recurrent year; to him it is as dead as last year's leaves. ,t times, as she drifted through the silvery wintery air, she blamed herself, recalling every word of counsel which her father and Aubrey had addressed to her. She had been unwise, she knew, to ppeak as she had last spoken to her husband. She had leen unwise to reject his proposal to travel with her into distant i mds; she bad done wrong to repulse so ccntiv that share in her sorrow which he had offered her with sincere and delicate sympathy. All this she knew. Hut the Tiicn of his other passions, had Flood bet.veen him and herself, and there was now forever sounding in her ear the avowal of his love for Beatrice Soria. That one bitter and restless remembrance haunted her, and would not let her stay in peace amongst the gliding waters and stillness of Venice, she did not know where ho might be. She could not write to inquire of mere strangers. She had the whole of Italian journals which were sold at the news-stalls bought and brought to her. He was so well known in Italy that she thought bin movements would be observed and chronicled, however much ho might try to guard against it. For several days she eaw nothing; on the ninth day she read in one of the sheets a little line announcing that he was still in Naples. She knew from the Venetians that he had left them some twenty days before. It seemed to her clear as the golden moon rising above the Euganean mountains that he was with her rival. The voice of her father soern'-d to nay to her from his grave, "Do not go thither; do not try to compel fate." She had done all that she could do to keep off the inquisitiveness ot society ; she had done more than many would" have done to offer a serene and harmonious feurface-existence to the stare of curiosity and malignity. Hut, beneath all that, the aching heart "of her youth was angered and seething like a sea in storm ; under all her apparent and enforced composure the blindest and maddest of all the passions jerdoosv, was tearing her soul asunder. "I have a right at leant to know," she told herself a thousand times, lying awake in what had been her nuptial chamber, listening to the lapping ot the water, on the marble stairs below, all the long night through, until the sound of the cannon fired at sunrise in the Giudecca told her that another dreary, empty, anxious, ii so'ate day had com. ,-I have right to know," 6he thought, m l, allowing Aubrey's letter to be unan-wr-t-ed, she left the Venetian sea-mints and water-ways, and went, also, southward through the amber sun rays and the .--afe lights of a luminous winter's day .-reading with noontide golden and glorifies ovrthe lagoons and the meadows of iho Lrenta. CHAPTER XLIV. It was now the close of November. Beatrice Soria was at the great palace of the koria, fronting the sea, where she still ruled iuprem by virtue of her young children, over whos.e lives ehe mm left cole and

complete guardian. This palace was one of the marvels of the South, built by Angelo Fiori, with ceiiinps by Pomenichino, and frescoes by Simone Papa. Its facade dominated the sea; to its rear stretched large and beautiful gardens. It was here that Guilderoy had first succumbed tj her charms in one soft, pay, Neapolitan winter, whichever remained on the memories of both of them as the one perfect page in their book of life. It was years ago now; but even.' detail and hour of it seemed to come hack to him as on a magic glass, as he saw the long white majesty of the great lionse. tower above its stairs and terraces, and mole ot marble. Every delicious and enchanted moment passed there revived in his remembrance; all that their intimacy had had of storm, of dispute, of doubt, of jealousy, of too arrogant dominion, had all faded from his mind ks though they had never been. His memories retained only the glow and glory of its noontide light. He utterly forgot the thunder clouds w hich had often broken over the colden beauty of those days of love. When at length he roused himself from ti e memories with which he stood on the strip of shore lelow and gazed at the mass of sculpture towering above him, and mounted the great stairway from the sea and asked ot the guardian of its gates it the I'uchess Soria would receive him, he was met by an inflexible denial. Her excellency received no one except from 4 to o'clock every Saturday afternoon, and again on Monday evenings from 10. It was then Tuesday. "With the crowd! never," he said to himself; and turned away, with feverish impatience and an aching heart. He passed the day wandering beside the sea or in the streets. At night he wrote to her; the first letter he had addressed to her since that in which he had announced his marriage. His declarations were as ardent and as comprehensive in it as those of TihnViM to iWmthe in the thirteenth carmen of the fourth book. He received no answer; and he was as wretched as Ca-inllvcs lover. On the third day after he had sent it, his heart beat breathlessly at sight of a large envelope with the two gold crowns on it, directed in the handwriting which he had once known so well, and which had sent him letters which at one time he had worn in his breast and which at another time he had held to a lighted match and burnt. lie opened the envelope with intense anxiety and suspense. Hut it was only a card printed in gold which announced that the Duchess Soria might be visited in "prima sera" on Monday evenings. There was no written word with it; only his name tilling up the blank space left for that purpose on the card. "Can any woman forget so utterlv?" he thought in passion and pain, oblivious that if she had learned the lesson of forgetting, he had been the first to teach it to her. His pride told him to leave Naples at once without seeing her; he felt that there was neither dignity nor courage in remaining a suppliant at the gates of one who once had been wholly his. The remonstrances of Aubrey haunted him with persistent reproach, and for the first time in Iiis life he saw his own conduct in its true light. Hut the ascendancy w hich Beatrice S ria possessed over him was stronger even, than the impulses of pride. He could not bring himself to leave the scene of their former joys, the place where soonest, if ever, her heart would return to him on the impulse of memory. Moreover, others who admired or adored her, others freer than he to prove his homage, had followed her thither also, and an intense jealousy of all that was possible in her future held him. There, as of old, in those smiling seas, the syrens had held too reckless mortals in their power, and so hers held hirn now upon these shores. He remained as though he were a boy of twenty, spending his hours beneath the sea-walls of her palace, and trusting to some favoring hazard to afford him that unwitnessed interview with her which lie sought. lie did not accept her permission to approach her with the crowd at her receptions. He felt that he could not trust himself to Fee her first again before a thron?, of which many would be strangers and all would be odious to him. Every day at sunset she drove, like other great ladiesof the city ; and every day at sunset he was standing or riding near when her great bronze gates unclosed. She gave hirn a salutation and a smile, but never checked her horses. He saw, or imagined that he saw, in the smile a triumphant mockery of himself. He was mistaken : it was merely the slight smile of courtesy wiiich any "well-bred woman gives to an acquaintance. There was no movement of society at that time in the city. The great world of Naples never bestirs itself until carnival comes. The populace were wild and mirthful in the streets as usual, but none of the (treat houses were opened except hers. Site had all the customs of a wider world than that of the Neapolitans, and had never been bound by their observances. The empty and fruitless days succeeded one another, and brought him nothing that he wished. At last he remembered that golden key which the classic lovers of this soil recommend to those who would see unclose a door too cruelly shut against them. All things are salable -still in the land of Ovid and Tibullus, and the honesty of no guardian of the lare is more proof now than then against a bribe. He saw, and looked at envioudy, in the high w all of the garden, the iron grating of the f osteri gate, by w hich he had used to lave the right of entrance at his pleasure. The same creeping plants hung over it as in other years; the same blackbirds plucked at the blackberries of its flowering ivv; the same great magnolia trees shrouded it in deepest shade; the parne sound of failing wat rr came from tho fountains behind it, ami the same cripple lay on the road fronting it, stretching out Iiis brown and filthy hand for alms. Nothing was changed except himself, nothing gone except his privileges, lie even heard the very vo ce of the same dog as, roused by the sound of his footsteps, it ran barking along the wtll within. In time, and with some ditticulty for the dependents of the S.iria palace valued their place and feared to lose it the potent talisman of tain succeeded in drawing back the rusted bolt3 of the little iron door, and the underling, who had betrayed his mistress for a handful of paper money, held back the dog as Guilderoy passed into the evergreen shades of the familiar garden paths. Hut the dog, escaping from the gardener's hold, ran to hiin and leaped jovfully on him. "i'oor 1'yrrho, do you remember me? You are more merciful than your mistress!" he murmured, as ho caressed the dog, profoundly touched by its affectionate welcome. He walked on under Iho deep aisles of bay and laurel. It was dark here in the gardens, though only the first stars had risen over the sea. He'had chosen that hour at which she would be sure to have returned from her drive, her dinner hour was not until 9, he knew, and when she came in it waa her habit to ait alone awhile in a

ema'l room hung entirely with allegorical . paintir.gg by Albani, and having great , windows looking toward the sea. It served her tu a boudoir and a librarv in ' one. Here, again and again, hundreds of j times he had found her of old reading j

pome new German or French book of philosophy, or the verses of some Latin poet. He entered the house by the garden loggia and the apartments which were called the garden-rooms. The servants were then closing the shutters for tho night; but they knew him and were not surprised to see him there, and one of them ushered him in without question through the house to the little chamber which was called the Salotto di Albani. She was seated with her back to the door, reading, or seeming to read. The licht from from the lamp fell on the dark gold of her hair, which was the hair of Palma Vecchio's liarhnra. lie could only see the crown of her head and one fold of her velvet trown, the hue of the dark side of an olive leaf ; all else was hidden by the carved back of her large chair. He saw her thus through the parting of the velvet curtains hanging before the door. Two lamps were burning low, end shed a roseate light on the room; the windows, still unshuttered, showed tho serene night, in which a Hush of day still lingered. He motioned the servant backward, and the man, who had known him well in other days and had then always let him enter unannounced, allowed him to do so now, and closed the door noiselessly. In a moment, before the Duchess Soria had even looked up from the volume she was reading, Guilderoy had crossed the room and was at her feet. She withdrew her gown from the eager clasp of his hands, and a flush of anger rose over her face. "You have bribed my servants !" she said with unutterable scorn. "You left me no other way. You would not answer me. You would not see me alone." "Why should I see you alone? As for answer I already answered enough more than enough at Aix." "It is an answer which I will not fake." "You must take it, since it is mv will to give it." slu withdrew her hands from his hold with something of the violence which he had once, know n in her. He kissed the folds of her skirts. "I will not take it ; I do not believe in iL All can never be over between us. Here, in this sacred room, which heard my earliest vows to you, I swear that you are the only woman whom I have ever loved in my whole life." "To how many women have you said so?" And how dare you recall vows which were only uttered to be foresworn?" "1 have said so to no other woman. No other living or dead." "You have said so at least to your wife ?" "Never. I never loved her." "Then why did you marry her? No woman can have either compassion or respect for any man who knows what he w ishes so little as that." He colored with offended pride and irritated pain. "I am human," he said, angrily. "Men have never, that I know of, in any part of the world's history, been conspicuous for consistencv w here their passions were involved." ' "Do you not understand what an insult to all passion such inconsistency is?" "No; passion is, in its very essence, wayward and shifting as the winds. You reproach me with my mutability. Hut you only do so because you will not endeavor to understand. It is only comprehension that is ever pitiful." She looked at him with a long gaze, under which his own eves fell. I think I understand 3'ou perfectly," alio said, in her low, sweet, dreamy voice. "You study your own pleasure. You do not consider anything beyond it. I loved you immensely. It is no flattery to you to say so. since for nearly seven vears I never disguised it from you, an the grave of your child is there in attestation of it. You knew that you were my world ; yet the moment that a new caprice attracted you, you dismissed me with scarcely mors consideration than you w ould have shown to a femme entretenue. I said nothing; I could not a venire it, and women of my character do not complain or appeal. Now, because vou see me sought by other men, or because, perhaps, your feeling for me was of a deeper kind than you knew, you are as ready to throw asid your allegiance to others as you were ready then to throw aside yours to me for them. Why should I give you either pity or credence? Why should I believe in the strength of leelings which have never been more stable than a marsh-light, which Hits hither and thither? You do not know what love is. You have too much selt-love to know it." lie sighed as he heard her; Ids conscience told hirn that there was truth in the charge. Yet he knew that his love for her was very great ; what proof could he give her which would persuade her of its strength? "You are unmerciful like all women," he said at last. "May I, without offense, tell you a truth also? I did love you greatly as much as it is in me to love at all. Hut you tried me often; you were too exacting, too imperious, too passionate. We always revolt when we feel the curb. It was a momentary impatience, not of you, but of the dominion you sought to have over me, which made me fancy that in marriage 1 might perhaps find greater tranquility and more genuine peace." "Beside which, I.ady Guilderoy was very lovely, and you wished for her, and you" had never denied yourself any whim or any desire! It is very possible that I was unwise and exacting. Few women are otherwise; and I have one pretension I confess, one which you know of old: I reign alone, or I reign not at all." Gui deroy smiled wearily. "Is that worthy of your knowledge of our weaknesses?" "Perhaps not. I make no claim to consistency. Hut what I claim I give. The world considers me a coquette because I have power over men. Hut I have never been a coquette in the sense of dividing my affections. I will admit, even though it Hatters you, that I have always been true to yon, though vou were false to me." He lowed his heaI and kissed her hands. His eyes were dim with tears. "Did you doubt it?" she said with a little disdain. "How little our lovers know of us! Our hearts beat against theirs, and our lives mingle with theirs, and yet they go from us knowing no more of our real natures than if they had embraced things of wood or of wax! Is it stupidity or indirlerence? I suppose it is the immense blindness of self-love. And you are all of you so blunt in your perceptions, and so coarse," she pursued. "If a woman has hazarded her position for vou, though you know she is all yours, and is as faithful as J)ilo, as tender as Ilnm, yet in your rude and clumsy classifications you will, in your own thoughts, bracket her with Lyditi and Lai." She put his hands off hers almost roughly for a woman of such plow and languid grace of movement. "Not I," ho murmured, gazing at ho

w ith eyes in which she might read more than the worship of old. "Oh, yes! you you more, perhaps, than most men. When, you wrote me your letter of farewell you ended it in delicate phrases because you are a gentleman, but the truth which pierced through thorn was that you left me as you would have left any bought companion of your pleasures." , "No; ten thousand times no!" he said vehemently. "You imagined what was not there. You exaggerated the offense to yöu. Women always will. I might be ungrateful, unworthy, failing in appreciation and penetration as you say, but I never for a moment failed to render you the honor that you merit." She smiled faintly. "Since you left me how can you expect me to believe it? If you leave your wife to-morrow will she believe that vou honor her?" "Why will you speak of her?" "We mut speak of her. She exists." "Let me forget that she does so!" The same faint dreamy smile came on her mouth; he could not tell whether ehe believed or disbelieved him, whether she esteemed him true or false, whether she loved him still or had pnt him wholly from her inner life. "You must be aware that your offense to me is one which no woman who has any pride can pardon. You love me, you do not love me, you think you love me again, you vacillate, you douht, you forsake, you adore; and' you expect me to humbly await you while your heart oscillates to and fro, now close to mine, now leagues away from mine." "I expect "nothing," be paid bitterly. "I have lost the right to expect, if I were ever happy enough to possess it. Only, if you will tell me any test by which I can prove you my sincerity, tell me what it is, and then you will learn whether I now speak on mere caprice or not." She was silent, while all the light of her deep and lustrous eyes seemed to plunge into his and through them', search his inmost soul. She was sileDt some moments, and she could hear the loud fast beating of his heart. "There is only one test' possible for me to accept or to believe in,' she said at last. :. "Tell me what it isj or, indeed, I will consent to it untold." 1 "Do not be too rash she paid, with a cold and momentary smile. "You must, however, know very well what it is. Leave your- wife forever and I shall believe in your love for me." He turned awav pale and wras mute. "You hesitate ?r' she eaid with interrogation and disdain. He sighed heavily. "It is a demand which does not affect myself alone." "Did your demand ot the past affect yourself alone? What' demand of love, or of life, can ever! concern oneself alone?" "You mean to leave her publicly?" "Yes; nothing less than that. I will accept no divided allegiance. It was for her you insulted me. It must now be her whom you surrender for vac" He was silent. "My honor," he said at last, but he hesitated, and she filled up the sentence. "Your honor ! You mean your conventional deference to the v"orldH "Opinion. You are weary of your wife, you shun, dislike and avoid her, but you consider your honor saved, if you affect with her, for society, a union which has wholly ceased to exist, either in fact or feeling. I tell you you know nothing of genuine passion or vital pain. You are honest neither to mvself or her." lie was silent; he breathed heavily; his heart was torn between conflicting emotions. "Remember," said Beatrice Spria coldly, "I do not ask this of you; I do not even wish it ; much less do I counsel it. I only say, as I have a right to say, that such alone is the proof of your sincerity which I can accept or credit. You already seek from me patience, forgiveness, and oblivion of no common sort: I have a right to answer that I can only give you these on certain conditions. You can fulfill them or reject them as you please. Thero was a time I confess, when I could have died of the pain of your abandonment. Hut that time is past You have taught me to live without you. I cau do so now and in the future. It is a lesson w hich no man who is wise teaches to any woman." He sighed as he heard; the words were the same in meaning as those which Aubrey had spoken to him of his wite. "What are your conditions?" he asl.ed in a low voice. "Tell me more clearly. What is it you exact? Your right I admit. I have never denied it." "What I have said. That you should leave your wife, and make it known to her that you leave her forever. You will write a letter of farewell to her which I shall read and eend. It was for her that you insulted and forsook me. It is her now whom you must sacrifice if you are in earnest." lie was eilent a moment; then he walked to the table near on w hich were paper and pen3 and ink, and a litter of opened letters. "Tell mo what to write." he said with tho same sound in his voice, which was half sullen and half imploring. He plunged one of the quills in the ink, and turned to her and waited. "No; not in that haste," ßhe eaid ; and she rose and closed her writing-table. "You shall not say or think in the future that I hurried you into an agitated and unmeditated act." Years ago we were much like that, but such madness is over. Your choice must be deliberate and wholly voluntary. It will last out your life and mine. So now, if you choose you can return to this room ät this hour" to-morrow. If not, leave Naples, and do not attempt ever again to see me or to speak to me, either alone or in the world." Before he could reply or remonstrate she had touched a handbell which stood near her. One of the men of the antechamber answered. "Show my lord to his carriage," she said to the servant. Guilderoy could not resist such dismissal. He kissed her hand with the slijrht salutation of an acquaintance and left lier presence. The servant ushered him with ceremony through the house and out by the great gates of the sea front He was scarce y conscious of what he did or where he went; and he found himself standing on the beach beneath the marble wall, with the placid sea beforo him shining under the stars, a few boats rocking in the silver of its surf. CHAPTER XLV. Unnerved, .beset with a thousand conflicting emotions, divided between intense desire and that honor which his education and instincts made a second nature to him, Guilderoy left the hall and went home across the gardens to the palace which he had occupied half a utile aw:y. The night was verv brilliant; the str.rs seemed strewn thickly as diamond dust; all the ear-piercing and countless noises of the Neapolitan streets had ceased. It was an hour before dawn ; there was no sound but that of the murmur of the sea. He walked through the white intense moonlight and the dim ehadows, now pabsing eome recumbent figure lying

stretched in sleep upon the stones, some j basket of malits whose tired seller had ( fallen asleep beside it on a marble stair, I some Madonna's lamp burning within a j

sculptured shrine, lie looked at nothing, neither outward to the sea nor upward, to the etars, nor downward at the slumbering beggars. His eyes only saw, as it were, painted on the radiant night, the face of Heatrice Soria. What 6he had demanded of him was a greater price than if she had asked of him the sacrifice of existence itself. He was a man to whom the curiosity and comment of the world were intolerable ; to whom the honor of his name had alwavs been sacred and kept intact through all his follies and excesses ; his attachment to John Vernon, lyimrdead in his grave at Christslea, was sincere, and his sense of the duty owing to his memory was strong. The hours passed uncounted: he had no sense either of hunger or thirst; he was wholly possessed by the agitation of his senses and emotions, and the 6truggie, which was violent, between his desires and his consciousness of what honor asked of him. The memory of her as he had seen her first on .the moors in the pale autumn morning came over him with a pang of wistful repentance and regret. The recollection of her in the first days of her marriage to him smote him with the sense of having sacrificed some innocent and trustful animal on the altars of 'his own brfef and destroying desires. He knew that to both the woman whom he had married and the woman whom he. had loved he had behaved with the unkindness which is the inseparable offspring of a purely selfish and physical passion.. He saw himself for the moment as others saw him; and he condemned himself as they condemned him in these solitary and bitter hours of self-examination. What Aubrey had justly defined in him as a feeling not" of affection, but of egotism, toward his wife, made it terrible to him to appear to other men as wanting in resppct or in regard for her.' He was sensitive to the insolence of public comment; and he abhorred the thought tbat through him the world would talk of her. He remembered her father with contrition and sejf-condemnation ; he remembered his own violent self-will in insisting on the caprice of his momentary desires, and all the wisdom with which John Vernon had endeavored to dissuade him' from his folly. He could not possibly blame any one except himself. lie could lay at no one else's door the difficulty and temptation in which he was now placed. He had blamed her indeed for want of sympathy and affection, bat he knew that he had had little right to do so. He passed the night hours pacing to and fro beside the sea. Once he bade a boatman row him out on the moonlit water, and he watched from it the receding shores. The boat drifted on under the stars on the open sea, the rower, half asleep, steering mechanically with his foot, and ever and anon idly dipping his oars into the waves. He was stretched at full length, his head resting on the bench, his eyes watching afar off the stately piie of the Soria palace towering against the moonbathed crouds, whilst the fragrance of its orange gardens came to him over the waves. After all, it seemed to him, his first duty was to the one who dwelt there. His marriage had been a supreme wrong done to her. If she could find reparation or consolation in . his love now, he thought that he was bound in honor to afford them to her; at least his wishes led him to try and believe so. And he loved her more than he had ever loyed any woman; her touch, her voice, her regard, stirred the very depths of his soul as no other's had ever done. Years of separation had given to his desires the freshness of a new passion, and the keen jealousy with which lie had watched the homage of others had intensified it tenfold. He was in that mood in w hich a man feels that all other things may perish if his love is left to him; the cry of Faust," "I give my soul forever, so that this woman may be mine!" It seemed to him that he never really lived save when he was with her. His senses w re stimulated, his intelligence was aroused, his wandering fancies were captured and concentrate 1 by her as they were by no other woman. The very indignity which he had indicted on her, and which she had pardoned, endeared her to him ; she had not clung to him in slavish humility, but she had loved him and forgiven him with a greatness which ennobled her in his sight. Such madness might be passed with her; in him it was as living still as when, years before, he had first watched the shirs rise over these waves anil the moon shine on the pale sculptures of her palace. She believed that he was incapable of suffering; but he felt tbat he drank its fullest cup to the lees. She was the only w oman on earth to him; the world seemed to hold no other. Hut a remorse, which was in its way as strong as the desire of his soul, was also at work within him. He knew that he would act vilely and with surpaaing disloyalty if he deserted so young a woman as his w ife, and one so w holly blameless. She had been unable to content him indeed: she had failed to correspond to some fanciful ideal which he had formed and imagined for a few months to be incorporated in her. She was not what he had wished or what he had cared for; but that was no fault of hers. She had promised him nothing which she had not fulfilled, and she had borne las name blamelessly through all trials. In what she had said to him on the day he left Ladysrood, she had been w holly justified by facts; and though he had so violently "resented her words, his conscience told him that they were w holly deserved ; that they had indeed been more forbearing than many a woman in her position would have made them. As ludicrous and commonplace thoughts intrude themselves sometimes on the deepest and most tragic emotions, there recurred to his mind his conversation with his sister on the evening he had announced to her his intended marriage; and of how he had replied to her prophecies of woo with the jest that no one ever abandoned his wife in these latter days, unless it were a workman who went off with the household savings to the United States. It had always seemed to him so easy to live so that the world need know nothing of private disunion or dissension; so easy to conduct existence on the pmooth lines of outward courtesy and apparent regard ; so eav to shut "the door politely in the face of a 6taring world in such a manner tbat it should imagine that there was perfect felicity behind iL He had always been disdainfully censorious of those who had not the tact or the good taste requisite to preserve these externals of harmonious agreement, which aro all that the world demands. And now he himself was on the brink of affording to the world that spectacle of disordered passion and of public severance which had always seemed to hiin so coarse and so unwise! Amidst all the heat and confusion of his thoughts there came over him the memory of John Vernon's pale, calm feat

ures in the mask of death, as he had seen them, with the summer sunlight falling, soft and warm upon them, while the little birds bad sung outside the casement underneath the leaves. The pang of an immense remorse, the throb of a great shame stirred in his heart. Lgotistt hough h was, given over to pleasure a'nd indifferent to rebuke, he felt ashamed and guilty before the mute reproach of the dead loan's memory. "I gave you all I had," the voice of tho dead seemed to say to him. "I gave it against mv will, and I warned you that you would use it ill. What have you dine with it? What will you say to me on that day when vou, too, come lefore the tribunal of the grave?" lie shuddered as he lay under the golden December moon, shining cold as steel down on the steel-blue ea. What had become of his honor? Where was his good faith to the dead? To a living man he might have been untrue, had lie chosen ; but to be false to one who could never arraign him, never offend him, never rebuke Jiim! he seemed to grow a coward and a liar in his own sight. All better things, all higher truths that he had never believed in, awoke in his soul, and bade him sutler w hat he would, lose all he might, but be faithful to his w.-rd to one who was no more numbered with the living. He gazed at the faint white shore gleaming afar off under the moonlit skies. "My love, my love!" lie murmured, I cannot be dishonored even for you! He trusted me " The tears filled his eyes, and the shining seas and the starry skies grew dim to bis sight. "Put m3 ashore," he said to the boatman. Iiis resolve was taken.

CHAITEK XLVI. "When he at hist reached his own residence and crossed' the court to enter his own apartments, it was nearly but not quite dawn. Large lamps 'swinging from the ceiling dimly lighted the two antechambers. In the second of them his body-servant was lying, fully dressed, face downwanl, on one of the "conche?, tired out with his long: vigil. Guilderoy, sank in his own thoughts, did not even see the man, and passed on to the three large roo i s which divided the vestibule from his bed-chamber. It was an old palace; lofty, spacious, magnificent, faded and duil." Busts of dusky yellow marble, weird- bronzes stretching out gaunt arms into the darkness, ivories brow n with age, -w orn brocades with gold threads gleaming in them, and tapestries with strange and pallid figures of dead go Is were all half revealed and half obscured in the twilight. As he moved through them, a figure which looked almost as pale as the Adonis of the tapestry and was erect and motionless like the statue of the Wounded Love, came before his sieht out of the shadows. It was that of Gladys. He paused, doubting his sense. With her long black robes and her pale features she looked rather a creature of the crave than of the earth, in the faint and fluctuating light which fell on her from the swinging lamps above. For some moments neither of them spoke. "What has happened?" he said at last instinctively. "Why are you hue?' He expected to hear of some calamity ; of Ladysrood burnt down, -or of his kindred dead. She was silent, she was deadly pale; there seemed nothing alive exccpt her intensely searching eyes, which gazed at him. "For the love of (Jod do not look at me like that!" he cried involuntarily. "What has brought you from Lngland? Why do you wait lor meat such an hour?" "It is the hour at which you have left the Duchess Soria," the said in a voice which was low but harsh. His worn face Hushed. "That is absolutely untrue! I left her house at S this evening." She pave an impatient movement which said without words, "Whv lie to me? ' "I tell you that I left her hoi;.? - at $, he repeated. "You shall not insult her in my hearing." "But you may insult me in hers!" "I never insult you. I speak of you always with the most unfeigned tespecr. But if you begin to track me, to lie in wait for me, to spy on me, to catechize r;e, I tell you honestlv that I shail respect y.u no more, nor will I patiently endure such espionage." All the gentler and more remorseful emotions toward her with which his breast had been filled as he paced the solitary shores and the deserted streets had been destroyed in an instant by the mention of theone name dearest to him. "Who has a right to be near you if not I" she asked with a haughty anger which scon-bed up the tears that mounted to her eyes. "No one dispute? your right," be answered with great impatience. "But 1tween right and welcome there are many leagues; and the title to come to me unbidden I would never award to any woman were she ten thousand times over my wife." "I am come to solicit nothing of you." 6he said coldly. "Oh.no! Only to watch for me, to trace out my actions, to question mc, to fetter me, to offend me! ': "Is it so strange that I wished to see you, to know something of you? For three months you have not w ritten to me, only to your servant. I heard that you were here; hero with her the only woman whom you have ever loved so you told me 1" Her words were broken, and her voice had a great emotion in it ; but that which would have touched him in his unstress only angered him the more intensely in his wife. "I forbid you to bring her name into this discussion !'' he said with more pa4sion. "You choose to follow me, and to make me reproaches; it i3 the way of women; they only lose all by it, but they are never deterred. I came away from you because you asked me intolerable questions and wearied me with useless scenes. If I have not loved you it has not been my fault. Love is not to Ikj whipped into obedience like a straying child." "Why marry me?" "What is the use of saying that again and again? You said it in London ; you 6aid it at Ladysrood. I deceived myself, and so I deceived j'ou with no thought or desire of deceit. When a man tells a woman candidly that he mistook his love for her, what more is there to say? He should ask her pardon, perhaps, for the wrong he has unintentionally done her. In that sense I ask yours." She did not reply. "It is better you" should know," he continued rapidly. "You will not care, perhaps. If not, ho best. I was about to write you. I am true to an allegiance Fromised before I promised mine to you. am aware the world does not recognize such unwitnessed vows, but they are all love cares for; they are all tliat ever really hold love, let men say what they will. I must tell you, since yon are here, the entire truth. I can give you no more of my life; I can live no longer in a feigned harmony which has wholly ceased to

exist I do not think it ever did between us; you may hate me; but so it must bs henceforth." He paused in strong emotion ; he wm neither heartless nor ungenerous, and he knew that his words must of neces-ity sound both. He hated to give pain to any living creature; and though she seemed 63 cold and still that lie doubted, as he had alwavs doubted, her feeling greatly, yet hfl knew that any woman must suffer so addressed, even if she only euflered in her pride. He waited for her to reply; but she said nothing. She stood motionless with perlect tranquil lit v. The words vre honest and truthful, but to their heart r they seemed cruelty and brutalitv incarnate. Had not her pride restrained her, she could have cried aloud like some animal in torture. But she was very prou l, an 1 whatever agony she might sutler afterward, she had force to hold back any expression of it now. Moreover, a consuming jealousy was upon lu r, giving her t-mporary strength; and yet her wlnle existence seemed racing and whirling from her, as a great river courses in its ha-te and storm toward the bottomless sea. She looked at him where he stod under the failing light frcm the lamp, pal, agitated, angered, and she could have thrown hers df u;on his brea-t and cried to him. "I love you! I love yon! (Jive me wme p!are the least, th Iowc:-t but some place in voar heart !" But pride kept hack that yearning impulse: sb- .-tood. erect and cold, in her black clothes, with the somber light of an unutterable reproach burning like a liame in her dark bine eyes. "You uT'' the iover of the Puchcss Soria." she said, logg liy. It was the mst i.i il thing she could have said, but she was not w ie enough to know that, (tuilderoy's inc fiushed hotly ; he felt all the impotent fury of a man, forced to say what it s -emed infamous to say. no matter now he might reply. "If to adore her b ? to be her lover, then I am so," he said with violence. "In no other fcL'P.sc now as "." She heard the first declaration ; she gave no credence to the second; sha thought it the mere conventional dt duration whiehatiuu deeirls it necessarv :o honor to deny hi relations w ith a woman. "I came to l.t-ar this from vour own lips," the said w ith perfect coldness. "I have heard it. There can be no longer anv doubt. I will go now." "t Jo where?" he a.-kc.l, in vague uneasiness. "That- cannot matter to vou. Farewell;" His anxiety deepened, despite his anger and his pre ccupation. Her manner seemed to him unnatural. Its serenity wes not in keeping with the burning pain and rebuke spoken in her eyes. "Why will you make ir.e these scenes ?' he sai l wearily. "I was thinking of you kindly when you lay in wait fcr me thus. I cannot endure surveillance, interference, espionage; and when you speak of the woman I iove more than all others on earth you madden me." "I will leave you to that other woman. Surely you can ask no more. Believe me I shall malte neither complaint nor scandal. I remember wh;:t my father wished Your name and his are safe with m" "I will write to ion," he -a: hurriedly, embarrassed and ditrew-d. "All possib!e arrangements (vni deration shall be made ail that I have is yni:r. I am deeply scn-P-a of the injury I have dorn to ou in making you my wife when yon were too young to know my character or your own, or mei-mre the feelings of either of u--; but if our father sees now. as some say the dead can fee the souls of trie living, he will know that I was entirely hornet in a'llhat I promised then, both to him and your.-elf."' His eyes w ere dim an 1 hi voice was uncertain as he spoke; a gr. at emotion moved him, and it seencd to him tbat sh. felt nothing whatever -Nothing but soom indignant scorn, p-jrhaps at most otn outraged pri ie. "Hie loe not really care; she knovnothing of love," bethought. It see.mcl to him that any wot), an ni had loved him would l ave eith r p. '.:red out to hi-u all the inries a dis.:p;.' .'inted r.n i deserted pasion, or have fa-leu ;'.t life fe t weeping in agonized supplication. B;it she gave no sign ei'Ju-r of vio'enc or of wretchedness. At her father's name h r mouth, trembled, and he thought i-T a moment that her composure would deert her; but shö soon recoved it. Whatever she felt sie betrayed none of it. "Be goo.l eno",':h t let tue pass," ho said, coidiy; and e;orli:'.-., humbled, yet angered with a Mns- of injustice done to him, a though he were t In offended, not the offender, he drew back and let her go, as she desired. "Where are you going?" h aid with hesitation. "You cannot go like this, all alone, in a strange city."' 'My . rva:;N ar w aiting. I will return to Lngland. Why !o you even ask me? It cannot matter to you !" "It must matt r."" He was confuted, agitated, passionate!" angered, an 1 yet alj the while cnsdou.i of a vague fear that in her strange s'IIIiu-sh anil repose she would do something rash and irrevocable, something which would haunt him all his life ong with remorse. "Iet me pass," she said, with her forced serenity unbroken. "I have told vou I leave you free. What more can I sav? You need fear nothing for any tragedy which might embroil you w ith your world. I shall go home." But as she went out before him through the bare bare, dim rooms her step unfaltering and her head erect, he realized how impossible it was to let her leave him the unprotected a woman who was his wife, who was as young as she and as fair M look upon, alone in the streets of such a a city as Naples was at such an hour. "I miM accompany you at least," h said as he overtook her. "You cannot go out in these streets alone. I v. id take you w herever you w ill." Then, and then only, her self-control forsook her; she turned upon him with the rapid and violent action of some animal wounded and tormented beyond its pow er to bear. "When my wholo life is destroyed by you. can you insult me by otfering m mere formal external courtesies? Can you think that it would matter to me il änv beggar of these lanes stabbed me and dragged m v body to the sea? What do you know of love, of frief, of pain, of sacrifice? Nothing nothing not bine no more than those marble gods that stare there in th 3 dusk. Let mo go! Yon 6hall not stir one step with me. I have told you that my servants wait below. Tbere shall be no tragedy such as you fear shou'd hurt your reputation as a man of honor with the world!" Then, with the swiftness of that step with which she had once gone careless and lightdieart.il through the moorland gorse, she went through the shadowy chambers past the still sleeping servant, under the great brazen 1 imp burning in the entrance, and down the marble stairway of the eilent hone. He did not follow hrr. All the gentleness and self-reproach with which he had thought cf her in the