Indiana State Sentinel, Volume 35, Number 1, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 February 1889 — Page 1

31 IPIj iillllltH

VOL. XXXV NO. 1. INDIANAPOLIS, WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 6. 1889. ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR

GU ILDEROY

EY Author of "Under Two Flags,'' "Two Little Wooden Shoes," "Chandos," "Don Gesuildo," Etc. f Now first published. Ail right re'orre 1. CIIAPTEU XLVII. A few evenings later Indy Sunbury was in her own houso of Illinton in tho midst of a largo circle of guests. It was two hours after midnight; her drawingrocms and ball-room were full; everyono was amused and amusing; she was going from one to another with bland smiles and suitablo phrases, ber harassed thoughts all the while with her elder daughter, who was encouraging the wrong suitor, and her second son, who v-33 lying dangerously wounded in India. In the midst of her occupations and Vreoccupations, at the moment when the ftiillon was at its hight, one of her servants called her away and presented to her a letter which had been brought by a messenger from Italy. She recognized in the superscription the handwriting of her brother's wife, and on the sral the roat-of-arms of the Vernons. "How exactly like her absurd extravagance!" she thought with contempt. '"How exactly like her to send a servant all the way by express with a letter, just as if we were in the days of the Stuarts or Tudors! What does she suppose that the xstal service and electric wires exist for, J wonder?" Innovations in trifles always annoyed her more than anything else, and she was so extremely irritated at this folly of her sister-in-law in sending a man-servant to rarry a letter by hand from the continent to England, that in her annoyance at the trivial eccentricity she almost forsrot her curiosity and apprehension as to the possible contents of the packet. She took it, however, to her boudoir, and there, being alone, opened and read it. The letter was written by Gladys from Kome, and began without prefix or preliminary. "Do not blame your brother for anything that you may hear of him. The fault is altogether mine. I am not a woman who could possibly make hiui happy as his wife. I am cold, bard, and unforgiving. My father even told me eo more than once before he died. Therefore, blame me entirely, and not Lord iuilderoy. for our ensuing separation. There need be no publicity or scandal of any kind. I am sensible" of the many pi its I have received from hiio, and l shall not return them with ingratitude. Jljit,. neither will J pre hjmnQrk.wiih. him, nor ItveTiudcr TueYoof 01 any of his houses. Except that he cannot marry again whilst I live, he will be as free as he was before we unhappily met, that autumn day upon the' moors. I hope that you will tell him so from me. I shall take rone of my jewels, nor shall I touch a farthing of my income from my settlements. What I have inherited from my father is quite enough to live upon. I have no c hildren living, so there need be no question whatever of. the interference of lawyers. I shall reside at the cottage at Christslea, so that you ran all judge for yourselves that my manner of life is worthy of my father's memory. Hut I beg that you will none of you seek for a moment to attempt to change the resolution which I have taken, for it is unalterable; and interrogation and expostulation would be only unbearably painful to me. You will, I entreat, lay all blame which may le incurred, upon me. The world has always considered me ill-suited to him. It will not be astonished that a union so inharmonious should be ended by that want of sympathy and temper which it has always attributed to me. You have ften reproached me with doing nothing to save jour brother's honor. I now at 1 -ast do what I can. You repeatedly conlemned me for poor spirited silence. Ee mlliciently just not to condemn me now for acting as you have frequently more than hinted to me that 1 should do.' The signature was (iladys Vernon. When Hilda .Sunbury had read the letter through to the end, her first impulse M as to start at once for the south ; the next moment she remembered that it was impossible and would be useless to. do so; she could not leave Illington for any length of time with her house full without her absence being known ; and what had been already done in Naples was hopeless and irrevocable. After an instant's meditation ehe sent for her eldest daughter. "I have had news which must take me to Balfrona to-night," she aid to her daughter. "You know my uncle is lying very ill there. I do not wish anyone to know that I am absent. I shall return the day after to-morrow. You can say I am indisposed from cold and have to keep ruy room. Make no fuss. Amuse everyone, lie discreet, and do as you would do if I were here. I shall be back in thirtyix hours. Say nothing to your father. It is not worth while. He would only ask innumerable questions." Then with the utmost speed and quietness ehe left the house, drove seven mils to take the morning train to tho north, succeeded in reaching it on the eve of its departure, and hastened as fast as steam could bear her across the length of England to where the mighty keen of Balfrons rose above its oak woods and faced the Cheviot. She knew that Aubrey was there. With the open letter in her hand, she passed unannounced into the library, where he was seated alone. Jle was at r-affrons for two days only. His father was ill, and was at that age when any light illness may easily pass into the last ill of all. No one was staying at the rastlc except the Duchess of Longleat and her two younger children. He rose in amazement and alarm as his cousin entered, for it was neariy midnight. "(iladys!" he said instinctively, thrown off his guard. Lady tunbury cast down the letter on the table before him. She was pale with passion, which sho had nursed in all its heat and strength during the lonely hours in which she had sped throuzh tho cold, dark winter country from Buckinghamshire to lierwirk. "What did I say?" ehe cried, her voice hoarse with fatigue and indignation. "I)id J not always tell you that you would encoaraga her ia "iicr sentimental, head

strong, insensate follies until she would bring disgrace upon us all?" Aubrey took up the letter, having in that moment's pause recovered his selfpossession. " 'Disgrace' is a very large word, and not a common one. in our families," ho said slowly. "liCt me know what she has said to warrant its use." He read the letter slowly, so slowly that Lady Sunbury's impatience became wellnigh ungovernable. She did not know that every word of it went to the innermost heart of the reader with that deepest of all sorrows that which is powerless to aid the life beloved. He held it in his hand when he had finished its perusal. "What is it you blame so much?" ho asked. His cousin, seated opposite to him at the great table at which he had been writing when she hail entered, grew red with indignation and suppressed feeling. "What? what?'' she repeated. "Everything, surely everything shows the most wanton disregard for us, the most theatrical resolution to obtain publicity, the most intolerable sellishness, the most obvious intent to ruin my brother in the worldVesteem! And to write it to me to me! You are her confllunt and her confe-sor; you have always been so; why could she not send such a declaration of her projects to vou, if sent it must be at all?" "It is natural that she should address yon a' woman, and her sister-in-law," said Aubrey, coldly. "But, pardon me, do you suppose such a deliberate resolution as this can be arrived at by ati3'one so young without some very great provocation to it? She does not say what it is ; but I imagine that both you and I can guess." Lady Sunbury's conscience stung her, rememlering the scene which she had made to Gladys in the king's alley at Ladysrood. Hut she was not a woman to acknowledge error. "Very possibly she may have had things which pain her," she said slightingly. "But other women have as much and more to pain them; and their sense of dutv and of dignitv serves to keep them silent."" Yes, they koop "silent" by leading a life of eternal disunion, bickering and upbraiding, as you do, thought Aubrey, as he answered aloud: "1 think you forget her youth; in youth these wrongs seem to till heaven and earth ; as women grow older they grow used to them, no doubt, as the camel grows to his burden. The letter seems to me irreproachable. She asks nothing; she demands nothing; she injures nothing; she sacrifices everything; and she ; .Hows you to p'.ace all the blame on her to the world. What can any one do more generous than this? 1 fail to understand." "You mean to say that there is nothing to bs done! ' she exclaimed. "What should be done?' said Aubrey, with the only impatience which had escaped him. "If a woman decides to leave her husband, and he decides to live so that she has no choice but to leave him, who is to reverse that position? They can reverse it themselves, as long a3 there is no legal separation." "And she is to be allowed to live in this insane mauner in solitude iu her fathers cottage?"

I "N'o one enn prf vrnt ripr dnino- go but (uilderoy, and it seems to me that he has lost all possible title to command her even if he wishes to do so, while it is mot probable that hf does not. There is no disgrace in her limiting herself to her own resources; there is even a certain dignity in it, as I consider!" "Because you are bewitched and infatuated about her !" said his cousin with rude contempt. Aubrey kept his temper marvelously. "I believe I am neither one nor tho other. I regretted her departure from England. At your request I endeavored to dissuade her from it. I did not succeed. She was unhappy, and when a woman is so she is never very wise. I conclude from this letter that on her arrival in Italy she learned what did not make her happier. The steps she takes are extreme that I grant but they only injure herself, and there is no one except her husband who can have any possible power to try and turn her from them." "He wili not stoon to solicit a woman who leaves him." "Stoop! You speak as though he wero faultless and she had committed some crime against him! You must know as well as I do that something much graver than his usual caprices 'must have moved her to write such a letter and take such a resolve. Do vou suppose that a woman as young as she is voluntarily severs herself from all the pleasures, graces and interests of life, unless life, as it is, has become wholly intolerable to her?" "And her duties," asked Hilda Sunbury, with violence, "do they count for nothing? Is she to be allowed to p'ay at ten-ni-, with the honor of my brother's family as her racquet?" "My dear Hilda," replied Aubrey wearily, "you have always considered that all creation exists only for the honor of your family. To others creation may still seem to have some additional, though do doubt minor, objects in view. However, even from that point, I scarcely concede that you can violently censure Iady (Juilderoy. She oflers you all possible occasion for examination into her life; she simply announces her intention of not living with your brother or in any of his houses. If he cares, he will seek to change her decision; if he does not care, he will necessarily be glad of it. Anyhow, there need be no immediate scandal; at any rate unless you are pleased to make it." "I !" exclaimed his cousin, disbelieving her senses. "What do I most abhor if not to have a single breath of tho world breathed on me? What have I not endured that society should never suspect w hat I have sutlVred? What women have not I compelled myself to receive in my own homes in order that the outrages inflicted on me should not form food for social calumnies and ridicule? Who in the whole width of English society has been so constant and so resigned a martyr as myself to all the indignities which- a man who does not respect himself does not hesitato to inflict on those whom ho should respect? And then you presume to say that I I! I shall bring about scandal concerning my brother's wife! It is herself who brings it. How can a woman do what she is doing without bringing about her ears a thousand hornet's nests of curiosity and misconstruction? How? Will you tell me that?" "The hon ets nest will come, no doubt. They are everywhere," said Aubrey, with a sigh of impatience. "My dear Hilda, forgive me if I speak plainly. Your own life has been a painful one; you have spent it in acrimony, reproaches, futile efforts to make black white, and endless quarrels which have never furthered your purpose one hair's breath. Your brother's wife, being unhappy, chooses a more drastic but a more dignified vengeance. There would be a third way open to any woman who had the strength, the patience and tie unscl2b.nvS3 for it, and X wish

that she had taken it. I endeavored to persuade her to take it; but she is young, and in youth and in pain the feelings are treacherous counsellors. What more is there to bo said? It is to your brother that you must co. It is useless to come to me. Iain not the guardian of Lady iuilderoy, nor am I my cousin's keeper. I have no more whatsoever to do with this sad letter than my dog Hubert yonder. It is a mistakeon her side; an error, and a grave one; but he lias brought it about by a much darker fault on his own, and he cannot complain. Neither you nor I can possibly interfere. We have no title to do so. If your brother acquiesce, all his relatives must acquiesce also. Of that no reasonablo doubt can be urged for one moment. The great dog, hearing his name spoken, rose and approached, and laid his head upon Aubrey's knee; Lis master stroked him with a sigh. Passionate and injurious words rose to Lady Sunbury's lips, bet she repressed them unuttered ; she was pale with rage and oirense, but she had strength not to insult a man whom the nation respected. "You cannot altogether disclaim responsibility for her actions," she said with unkind and insolent meaning. "You have guided them for a long time. You must pardoa me if I do not credit that this letter and the resolutions contained in it are altogether so unfamiliar to you as they assume to be. You were the last person who saw Lady (iuilderoy in Lngland, and evervone is aware that you have been for a long time her most cherished and trusted friend." Aubrey rose to the full high: of his great stature, and stood at the end of the great library-table as he had often stood at the table of the house of commons. "You are a woman and my cousin," he said slowly. "J'oth persons are privileged in you. Jiut be so good as to remember that I do not allow even a lady to a cast a doubt on what I have said is a fact ; and you will kindly take care not to hint the insult which yon have just hinted outside the walls of Balfrons." She was impetuous, courageous, and full of dark and insolent suspicion, but bold though her temper was, and uncontrolled, she, did not dare to atl'rout or oil'end him farther, and she was silent. "It is late," said Aubrey. 'Allow mo to accompany you to your rooms. You will see Ernjntrude in the morning. She retired very early, for she was fatigued with watching my father. To-night he is quieter aud asleep." Then with all courtesy and ceremony he waited ou her across the halls and corridors and naileries of the great castle, aud only bade her good night at the entrance of that suite of rooms in the tapestried wing which were always set aside as hers, und which were warmed and illuminated ior her now as though she had been expected there since noonday. He was not conscious that he had kept the letter from Gladys in his hand, and she had been too enraged and mortified to ask him for it. He walked slowly backward to the library in the midnight stillness ; everything was "hushed into greater quiet than usual that the rest of the old marquis might not be disturbed. The lamps burned white between the armored figures, the drooping banners,, the trophies of arms, the massive and fantastic carvings of the oakpaneled walls; his own steps sank soundless tm - the thick carpeting. Hubert followed him with noiseless velvet feet. He paused before one of the great unshuttered casements, with their iron gratings, which had been there in the Wars of the Loses, with the blazonries of the house of Dallrons stained upon their glass.. The night without was frosty and moonlit. There was snow on the ground, and snow law on the roof, the turrets, the corbels, the battlements of the mighty Border castle. The keep, round, massive, terrible-looking, like a fortress for giants in the starry night, towered up in front of him upon the other sido of the quadrangle. He had a deep and filial love for Ba.1frons, and if public life had not called on him for absence, he would seldom have left its treasure-house of books and its great forests filled with wild cattle and red deer and all water-birds and moorbirds which ever haunt the reedy meres of the old romantic border lands. He sat down in the embrasure of the window and read her letter over again, word for word, by the light of the lamp banging over his head. There was not a sound in the house. The clouds swept past the casement in grca, moonlit, hurrying armies. The deep bell of the clocktower tolled midnight. Every word of the letter sank into his heart like a knife. Every work thrilled with the violence, the misery, the despair of a treat love which was writhing under abandonment, outrage and misconception. The step she had taken was unwise; it had a child's rashness, a woman's obstinacy, and a forsaken woman's recklessness; but there were a self-negation and an austerity in it which were in their error very noble, and touched chords in his own nature which responded to them. "I think she would have been happy with me," he thought : and he sighed as he looked out at the cold and luminous night and the great keep towering to tho skies. But now, though he would have laid down his life to save her, he could not give her one hour of peace. A furious longing came over the calm, grave temper of Aubrey to cast all other considerations, public and private, to the winds, and avenge her wrongs upon his cousin with the rude, frank championship of another age and country than their own. But reflection told him that such an act could do her only harm; could only give her name more completely to the world's tongues, and could only possibly awaken in her husband's mind doubts which wonld dishonor her, and give him, in his own eyes, a palliative for his own oirense against her. "I have no title to interfere," he thought sadly. "I am not her lover. Scarcely even did she at last accept me as her friend." A thrill of what was to him degrading and criminal, because a selfish pleasure, passed through him at the memory of the utter loneliness to winch 6ho had condemned herself, tho dangers, the barrenness of the future which she had shaped for herself. Jlut he hated the cruel egotism of the thought; ho spurned and checked it as it rose in him. "How vile we are at heart!" he mused, with disgust and shame for the momentary selfish hope which had intruded itself on him in bis own despite. "How odiously vile! and yet God knows if I could by any personal sacrifice- purchase her happiness there is none at which I would hesitate." ' But whit sacrifice could avail anything? Her happiness and her wretchedness lay in other hands than his.

CIIAFTEL XLVII I. It was a winter's day when the woman whom he loved reached the little cottage at Christslea, having traveled without ceasing, pausing only for one night in Lome, tho night in which she had written the letter to her sister-in-law. Tho bay was ehrouded in the white

fogs of a damp December; the waves were rolling heavily with a deep roar upon the beach; the winds were sighing amongst the leafless orchards and over the bare scarps of the cliffs. She went into tho little study, still crowded with her father's books and papers, and bolted the door, and sat down before the fire on the lonely hearth. All was still, gray, inexpressibly solitary. The little place was gay and fragrant and please ant in summer time, when the hedges were full of the songs of birds, and the air full of the scent of wallflowers and stocks blossoming in the homely garden ways; but it was intensely melancholy in the w inter season, with thesilence of mist and cold brooding over its solitudes. She shuddered as she looked at the narrow casements, whero the glass was wet with the vapors of the morning, and the gray veiled landscape was dull and blotted like a drawing soaked in rain. It seemed an emblem of her future existence. She for the first time realized the choice which she had made, the thing. which she had done. From the time she had left the palace in Naples until she arrived hero she ha i had no distinct sense of what had happened to her. She had been sustained by the violence and the fever of an intense passion, by the iron in her soul of an immense w rong; she had gathered a fictitious strength from the magnanimity and the dignity of her choice, and the calmness with which she had spoken to her husband had lasted throughout her journey homeward until this moment, when, having dismissed the servants who had accompanied her in London, she had come w holly alone to the little house where her father's memory was her sole companion, and would bo her sole consultation in the future. Then, when, not heeding or replying to the startled and agitated questions of the two old people left in charge there, she came into tlds. chamber where her father's presence seemed a living and near thing, the sense of all she had given up, of all she had accepted, came to her for the first time in all its nakedness and horror. She did not regret what she had done ; she would have done it again had shebeen called on to ratify her choice; it seemed to her the only thing which was left for her to do and in common honor and in common courage; yet the pale and ghastly terror of it faced'her on the threshold of this chamber like some ghastly 6hape. The want of the one familiar voice so often heard there, the one unfailing tenderness so often proved there, overcame her with the sickliness ot irrevocable loss. The pale gray walls, the pallid vellum volumes, the white discolored manuscripts, the dull misty windows, the cold hearth, seemed to her like so many mourners mourning with her. "Father, father!" she cried piteously to the blankness which was around her; the silence alone echoed the cry. With a gesture of agonized supplication, of heart-breaking prayer, she stretched her arms out, seeking some shelter, some embrace, some kindly hand. The narrow walls of the little book-room went round and round giddily before her sight; the casements narrowed into a single point of light She fell face forward senseless upon the floor, and a great darkness like night closed in on Iier. '. When she reeov-Ted consciousness she was lying on the- little bed which had been hers in childhood, and she saw the withered brown face of the old woman who had kept house there from her earliest memories stooping above her in anxiety and wonder. She did not speak, she did not move ; she lay still and gazed at the whitewashed walls, the sloping ceiling, the narrow lattice; and she remembered to what a future she had condemned herself. .She saw always before her the face of her husband as she had seen it in the light and shadow of the Italian moonlight cold, pale, angry, handsome his eyes resting on her without a ray of tenderness in them, his lips speaking passionate declarations of his loyalty to her rival. The long 6woon, which had frightened the people of tho house, had been due to cold, fatigue, long fasting, and great emotion. It left no evil result after it, and with a new and strange weakness making her limbs tremble and her brain turn, she went down the narrow stair in the morning light to take up that lifo which was henceforth to be her portion. There was a fire burning on the study hearth, and the old folks had set some homely winter flowers in the gray Flemish jugs on the center table. The pale sunshine of a line wintry day was falling on the black and white lines of her father's drawings on the walls. She shrank into his large writing-chair before the table, on which his last written sheet, with the pen on it, lay as he had left it on his last day of life, and she tried to realize this catastrophe which had befallen her, this earthquake which had shaken into ruins all her summer world. The violent agitations which had followed on her arrival in Naples, the hurried and scarcely conscious journey homeward, the suddenness and irrevocableness of her own actions, had given her a stunned and bewildered feeling, like that of a sleeper roused from his dreams to hear of some misfortune, rudely told. She had written her letter to her sister-in-law with clearness, force and calmness, but with that effort her nerves had given way; a burning fever, a painful 6euse of exhaustion, had followed on it, and, though she had controlled all outward sign of them until her arrival at Christslea, they left her enfeebled and unnerved. She was terrified by the violence of the passions which she "felt, and which had been intensified by the control over them which she had maintained whilst in her husband's presence. "Am I no better than this?" she t hought,ashamed and appalled at the furies which raged in her breast. She leaned over the tire, shivering and hot by turns as if with ague. She did not regret her choice; she had no other which would have seemed to her endurable; but the horror of her future was very ghastly to her, and as sho sal alone in the little "dull room, with the rime frost white on the panes of the window and the noise of the waves coming up through the silence, the memory of the gay southern sunshine in which she had left him, the perfumed air, the sparkling seas tho tfcas of the Syrens was ceaselessly before her, and life seemed to her a burden too intolerable to be borne. The slow dark day wore on ; the clock ticked off" its tedious hours; the fire burned bright or burned dull ; there was no other change. The old dyg, who had been at her father's feet in his last moments, lay beside her, lifting every now and then drowsy and tender eyeB to her face. They brought her. food, but she could not take it. She dranlt a cup of milk; that wa3 all. She took up her father's Virgil and tried to read tho passages in which she had been used to take most delight, but she could make no sense of the familiar lines; the letters swam before her sight, and she laid the book down w ith a sick despair. Would all her life be like this? with every interest of heart and intellect, every innocent pleasure of nature, every

harmless charm of existence, made void and useless to her? "Ah, how little my dear father knew!" she thought, seeing the red embers of the hearth through blinding tears. He had bade her make her love so great that no other woman could give its equal. What use were that? What avail to pour out gold at the feet of him who only sees in it mere dross to oiler the universe to one who is only impatient of the gift? There was nothing in .her that her husband cared for; what mattered it to him that 6he was altogether his body and sotii? He would in all likelihood be more grateful to her for an infidelity which should set him wholly free. " CHAPTER XLIX. As she sat thus, till the somber day grew to the third hour after noon, she beard the latch of the garden lifted and a man's footsteps crush the weUhinglo of the pathway to the porch. She rose, breathless, her heart beating to desperation with the wildncss of a sudden hope. She thought it possible that Guilderoymighthave followed her there, might have repented of hjs choice, might have come to oiler her his atonement and regret. . A terrible disappointment blanched her white face whiter still as the door opened and she saw in the shadow of the passageway the lofty stature of Aubrey. He was the best friend that she had on earth, but had he been her crudest enemy the sight of him could not have hurt her more than it did then. Aubrey came up to her and took her hands in his with unutterable tenderness and compassion. "My poor child my poor darling how I grieve for you," he said with broken voice. Then she knew that he must have read the letter which she had written in Rome. "Yes, Hilda showed me your letter," he said, answering the interrogation of her regard. "It shocked me. .1 would have given my right hand that you had not written it,, still more that you had not been caused to write it. For it is a fatal error, Gladys." "I could do no less," she said, coldly. The reaction of the intense hope which had for a moment leaped up in her made her feel sick and faint; she disengaged her hands from his, and seated herself by the hearth, in the great chair, her back almost turned to him. "You could have done nothing at all. It would have been wiser,". he said with infinite pity. "My dear," he added reproachfully, "only think 'what it is that you have done. YVhat will you have made of your life? Could you not have had a little faith in my warnings?" . She hardened her heart against her truest friend; 6he gathered her pride about her coldly and stiffly; she saw in him only the messenger and mouthpiece of her husband's family. "I have done nothing that anv of Lord Guilderoy's friends can blame,' she answered. 'I have said nothing to anyone of all my acquaintances, and I shall say nothing to any of them. I only ask to be left alone. I am sure that I am living as my father would have wished me to live, and I shall spend nothing but that which he has left me." She spoke in a measured and constrained voice, us to a stranger. She could not forgive Aubrey what she thought his preference of his cousin's cause and desertion of her own. "You have done most unwisely," he said, with a sigh. "I am not defending my cousin, God forbid! He is beyond all defense, all excuse, and I should be ashamed to attempt to give him either; but you would have had fuller sympathy from the world at large and greater comfort, I think, in your own thoughts if you had taken no active part in the destruction of your ties to him." "I did nothing more than was my right," she said coldly. "That I do not dispute. But, as I told you, a woman's rights are her rashest counselors. After all, dear, what has one human being of real 'right' over any other's life? To claim affection is idle. If it be no longer ours we must break our hearts as we will. We can not bridle the winds. We must wait in patience till thev blow again whither we would have them." "Then no woman must ever listen to the words of any man." "I did not mean that. I meant that when we have the calamity to be loved no more we must revile neither man nor woman. We must look within. Maybe we shall see the cause of our woe." She flushed hotly with anger. "How have I been to blame? It is not mv fault that his caprice only lived a day." Aubrey was silent. She understood that his silence was blame. "You are unjust, like all his family," she saiil passionately. "I have made no scandal, no exposure, no publicity. I shall make none. What more can his friends demand? He is left in peace with the only woman whom he loves!" "My dearest Gladys," said Aubrey wearily, "I am not defending him. It has gone hard with me not to revenge you with oldfashioned violence which would have made him pay for your tears with his body. You may believe that not to do so has "been the greatest effort of my life." Her eves softened and grew dim. "Is that really true?" "I do not 6ay what is not true, dear." She stretched her hand out to him. "I thank you very much," phe said in a broken voice. Aubrey kissed her hands with reverenco and an emotion which he endeavored to subdue. "I am no lover of knights, my dear," he said sadly, "and the publicity of my life makes indulgence in romance impossible to it : but I should be less than a man if I did not feel for you the deepest, the most indignant sympathy. That your wound should have been dealt you by one of my kindred makes me feel "it like a personal dishonor " He paused and with a strong effort controlled, unuttered, words of greater tenderness and fuller confession. "But I will tell you honestly," he added, after a pause, "that I regret and blame your actions. They will cost you dear, and you have not measured the price of them. There is much that is fine and even heroic in them, but can you honestly say, dear, that you believe your father, were he standing here now, would tell you that you had done well or wisely?" She was silent. She was too truthful to assert a belief arhich she could not entirely feel. "You cannot; for he was a wise and good man. He knew that women are always their own enemies when they follow the dictates of pride, and of pique, and of jvalousy. Pardon me if these words seem unfeeling; they are inadequate to express the great wroug that you suffer from, but after all they are the only ones which describe the impulses which you have acted on now." "May there not be 6uch things as outraged decency and delicacy, and indignant honor?" "Yes, no doubt; who could deny them? But feeling alone is the most dangerous of

guides. It drowns us in deep waters while we think ourselves safe oa dry land. You imagine you wero sparing Uuilderöy the comment oftheworid; on the contrary, the world blames him and blames you equally, and through you, where it would only have been seen a mere passing difference, will now see a scandalous and unalterable offense." "I can not help it if his passions are so made that they do not last a year; if it is what he has not which always seems so much better than what he has. It is not my fault if he married me as he would buy a coeotte, and tired of me as he would tire of her. i have released him as fur as I can possibly release him until death takes me. I will not eat of Ids bread, or live urlder his roof. I will not wear a gown he paid for, nor a ring he purchased ; even my marriage ring I threw down before him he did not even see it what did: he care ? He was only thinking of her; sighing.for her because she had the wit to assume indifference to him!" She spoke with violence and with vehement 6corn; he had never seen her so strongly moved before, ofteuas he had had to soothe her indignation and persuade her into peace. All that she had endure! in silence since she had left Naples broke out in these, the first words which she had been able to pour into the ear of any listener. lie stroked her hair tenderly as he might have touched the hair of a suffering child. "CVtm yourself, my dear," he said gently. "Many women sutler what you suffer now. Only believe me, the remedy you have chosen is one which will harass and deept your wound and never heal it. You iave called the world in as your physician. It is one which kills and does not cur-'i." "Perhaps it would be best that I should kill myself;! have thought of it often. But I always remen-ber that my father thought suicide a cow ardice. Sometimes I am inclined to do it; it would set him free. Perhaps he would think of me with kindliness if" I were dead." "And are there none who would regret you more than that?"' said Aubrey, with a rebuke in his voice which he could not restrain. "No; why should they? If I am nothing to him I am nothing to any one." She spoke wearily, listlessly, thinking only of herself. Aubrey's "heart heat quickly; he said nothing, and she did not look at his face. There was long silence between them, tilled only bj the lulling noises of the sea. "It -is' impossible that you can remain here!" he said abruptly at last. "You are too young, twenty years too young. You wish to stay the tongues of the world ; what can set them in full cry like such an act as this?" "They will say I am cold and odd. They have said so very often before. ' That is the worst they can Bay I hayc never heeded it." "It is not the worst! They will attribute motives to you cf which you do not dream." "What motives?" "My dear, when a woman does not live with her husband, society is always sure that she lives with some one else. You force me to be brutally sincere." Her cheeks flushed ; she raised her head with hauteur. "My life is free to all his. family .to observe. There is no concealment in it It is as plain to be seen as the white face of that cliff." "That is the sublime madness of innocence ! The more open, simple and harmless it actually is, the more will the world be certain that it conceals a secret and an intrigue." "That must be as it may. My own conscience is enough for me. And surely you forget; the world knows it cannot choose but know that Lord (iuilderoy finds his happiness elsewhere." "And the world, which is always ready to excusa the man and accuse the woman, will very possibly say that it is pardonable he should do so, because who knows what deviltry they will not say? Only of this you may be very sure: that they will never believe that a woman of vour years voluntarily shuts herself in such solitude as this without consolation." "They can believe what they please. If they place the blame on me, not on him, I shall have done what my father always bade me do bear his faults for him. I shall receive no one. It is impossible that calumny can invent anything, unless they find sin in the gulls of the air and suspicion in the rabbits of the moors." "They will find it even in these, doubt not, rather than find it nowhere." "They must do so then." "You are cruel and perverse." "I do not mean to be either. But I will not reside in any one of 3-our cousin's houses, nor will I touch a shilling of my dower from him. I am nothing to him. He is nothing to me. I only still keep his name because I cannot be relieved of of it without publicity, nor even with publicity, I believe, as the laws of marriage stands." "No, you could not. And vou would not free yourself if you could.'5 "Why do you say so?" "Because you will always care for him. Some day you will pardon him, some day he will ask you to do so, and such forgiveness will be the renewal of affectiou. "Never!" "Oh, my child! how long does a woman's 'never' last? So long as the man whom she loves does not kneel at her feet, and no longer." The color deepened in her face. "What you say to me is an insult. I have no feeling for the lover of the Duchess Soria; or, if I have, I pray God night and day to tear it from my heart, for it is dishonor abasement ignominy ! When I forget it or forgive it, you may tear my heart out of my body and throw it to tho hounds of I3alfrons!" "Do not make rash vows, my dear,'' said Aubrey, gently. "Women forgive everything when they reallv love." "No no not that !5' "Oh. yes, and far worse than that. What use is love it it be not one long pardon?" "Then it is one long weakness !" "Or one long and inexhaustible pityone long and infinite strength." There was a tone in his voice which soothed the passionate unrest and indignation of her soul. It seemed to her as though she heard her father's voice speaking by Aubrey's lips. "You are good," she said wistfully; "I wish you had loved me and I you." The words were as innocent as though a child had spoken them, but thev tried the forbearance of the bearer of them with a cruel martyrdom. He rose hastily, glanced at the dusky shadows of the deel ning day and bade her a hurried farewell. "You will come and see me often?" she asked him, as she held his hand in hers. He looked away from her. "As often as I can, dear. You know I have so little time for my own affairs. You shall always know where I am, so that you may send to me in a moment if you need. Adieu. Believe me your firmest friend, even though I am no flat

terer and do not pretend to approve yon in what you now do. I will write often to you and you will write to me. I hope that you will soon write to tell me that you renounce this cruel choice of life. The calm and uninipassioned words cost him much in thdr utterance. He longed to offer her his "life, his soul, hi endless devotion, to put away all national needs and. duties from him and cleave only to her, if he could comfort her or atone to her in any way ; but he resisted the temptation and leiit her with a kind and tranquil tarewell. He knew that her heart was not his; he believed that it would never be his; he scorned to try to persuade her that indignation and revenge and loneliness and gratitude mingled together could ever make fair counterfeit of love. The lesson might be taught perhaps with time. A bruised heart is ottea like a wounded bird; it falls to the first hand that closes on it; but he knew . that such affection would never le love in anv sense, in any shape; he believed that. all of love which would ever stir in her breast was now and would ever be given to the man who had abandoned her. .Other men, more eaily contented and of less sureptible honor "than he, might have endeavored to supply the lost passion, to replace the perished joys; to persuade her that ali she felt of bitterness and wrong could be most deeply and surely, and most thoroughly in kind, avenged by the acceptance of other sympathies and other affections than those which wero denied her. But Aubrey's were not the lips to utter these persuasions or these sophisms; nor would he, well as he loved her, have cared ever to accept the mere fruits or tortured jealousy and humiliation, which in their sufferings might have imagined themselves love. As he left Christslea he looked across the misty wintry wold, across to the hori zon, where the brown woods, the shining roofs, and the many spires and towers of Ladysrood were faintly visible on the grayclouded edge of the far moors. Its master had left his fairest treasure) unguarded and unremembered, thought Aubrey; if any bore it away from him, who could he blame but himself? ( To be continued nrjrt vwt.)

THE MURDER OF JUDGE CLAYTON. Detail of the Killing The AMissin Tired Tliroujh a Window. Pi.c.mm euville. Ark., Jan. 30. The follow, ing details of the killing of the Hon. John L Clayton, who was shot in his room at Mrs. Craven's house at 9 o'clock last tight, ra learned to-day. D. II. VVomach of Banton, Ark., a traveling roan, and Mr. Alnutt, a friend of Clayton's, were occupying the same room with the murdered man. Mr. Clayton had been ner. vous all the evening and was pacing the floor with his hands in his packet. Fina'ly h walked toward the window, over which th Wind was panially drawn, an-l was ia the act of sittin? down when a shot was fired through the window, making a very loud report and putting out the light. The blood could b heard runninj from Clayton, and Womach exclaimed: "The lamp his exploded and killed hi:n." "Xo," s.iid Alnutt, "he has been shot." When a light had been secured it was found that a load of buck-shot hid been fired through the window, taking e;Tect in the rieht side of the victim's neck, breaking it, one bullet pa?s inc: ctearthroush. lie had fallen back in his chair and then over 01 the floor. This is th story as told by Mr. Womach and is straight. There is no clew to the pe rpetrators of the outrage, but a pistol was found underneath the window this morn in? whieh may probably lead to the discovery of the assassin. No one advances any theory yet. A treat number of popV, principally negroes, are in the little village, but everything is orderly and quiet. This morning Coroner Hutr commenced the inquest. I). A. Womackand V. I). Alnut testified pubstantilly as given above. Mr. Alnnt testified in addition, that he heard steps ontfide the window both before and after the shooting. The verdict of the jury was that J. M. Clayton came to his death from three or more leaded balls, at the hands of some unknown person. Little Hock. Ark., Jan.30. The remains of John M. Clayton were brought to this city to-nirht and were met at the depot by a Knight Templars commandery and a vast concourse of rteople and escorted to the coinmandery any nn, were they lie in state till to-morrow to be taken to Pine Blurt" for interment. The fatal wound is a very uly one. A charge of fifteen of buckshot entered the right 6ide of the head, tearing a hole in which a man couM run his fist, even balls pased clear through, making a hole on the left sdde an inch and a-halt in diameter. The reck was broken, all the arteries from the brain to the heart severed, and death was instantaneous. A pistol found just outide Mrs. Craven's yard is the only clew to the perpetrators. It is a Smith fc Wesson, forty-four caliber, bine barrel, latest improved, brand-Dew, loaded full, and never been fired. Men came back last nicht at 2 o'clock, prowled around the house trying to lind it, bn.t the men inside were unarmed and w-re afraid to venture out, knowing it meant certain death. The aseassins wore heavy arctic overshoes, which they pulled otf'ad soon as they got outside of the yard. The people of TMumnierville are horror stricken and mystified, and feel outraged, too, on account of the cowardly assassination, and operdy declare they would ha.ng the assassins if can cht. A bill was presented in the senate to-day au thorizinsr the governor to otT-r S-i.OOO reward for the arrest of the murderer or murderers of John M. Clayton, and it was mide the special order for to-morrow. ORDER RESTORED. Scenes of Bloodshed and Hlot a Thing ot the lant IleKulatorii' Work. New Iberia, La., Jan. 30. New Iberia hat again assumed its normal con lition, and seenej of bloodshed and riot which have kept the inhabitants in a fever of excitement since Friday night last, have become a thing of the pastwith the exception of street-corner talk and gossip upon the subject. While a large number of citizens indorsed the slaying of th negro Wakefield, there ere many who expres the opinion that as he was in the custody of the authoritle?, the law should have been al lowed to take its course. As to the action of the regulators in whipping some negroes, shooting at others, banishing many and debtroying their homes, the best element of citizens condemn it. i There were but thrf e negroes whipped, anl the whipping took place on Sunday. The regulators were organized in the town, and were re-enforced by a lanre number of men fiam the surrounding country. They first seized a negro, twenty-four years of age, named Joe Velos, alias James Modes, and conveyed htm to the railroiid track and there whipped him unmercifuily. Their next victim was an old negro, aged seventy. lie was treated in the same brutal manner. The name of the third negro whipped could not be ascertained. When the three had been well llogged ther were ordered to leave the parish which they did. Not a single man in Iberia, either official or citizen, could give any tangible reason for these gross cruellies. One nuin says the victim were thought to be agitators. The next two negroes that the While Caps turned their attention to were ex-Justice of the Peace McGailey and his son. They ordered them ta leave town, and as the negroes took their departure the regulators opened fire npoa them with guns and pistols, but they lackily escaped without injury. After the uegrocs ordered to leave had taken their departure, the mob proceeded to demolish several of their houses and places of business. Although a large number of those who participated in the attack upon the negroes art known, no arrests have been mide, nor haa there been any investigation of the affair.