Indiana State Sentinel, Volume 35, Number 2, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 February 1889 — Page 1

YOL. XXXV-NO. 2. INDIANAPOLIS. WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 13. 1889. ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR.

GU ILDEROY

BYAuthor of "Under Two Flass," "Two Libtie Wooden Shoes," "Chandoa," "Don Gesaaldo," Etc Now first published. AU right referred. cnArrER i The davs and weeks and months drifted on; the chilly sprinsr, the uncertain summer, the stormy autumn of. an English year succeeded one another, and the dawn broke and the night fell over tho lonely shore of Christslea, bringing no change in the monotony of her existence. Guilderoy rermined out of England. The world, with ita usual discrimination, pitied him and blamed Aubrey. "Vox femin?e vox Dei," and women without exception took part against Gladys whenever they now remembered her at all, which was but seldom. They were all of them certain that she could have been entirely happy with her husband had she chosen, since he was always fo charming; it was her want of amiability and of tact, they agreed, which had caused his errors. No one with such exquisite manners as his could be otherwise than most easy to live with. Ah! why had he thrown himself away on anyone bo utterly unsympathetic? Here and there some man who had always admired her beauty, or who had reasons of his own for knowing that Guilderoy was not a faithful husband or a constant lover, lifted up his voice in her defense; but such a one was always in a very narrow majority, and rallied few to his opinions. Hilda Sunbury, moreover, had pronounced against her eister-in-law ; that was quite enough to condemn her. She was not, indeed, at easa in her own conscience for having done so; but that society did not know. She was a woman of honesty of purpose and rectitude of character. She was aware that she had been the primary cause of the final separation between Guilderoy and bis wife, and she was constantly haunted by Vernon's farewell words. But her dislike to the mistress oi Ladysrood had been stronger than her candor cr her justice ; her prejudices for her family were stronger than her regard for pure tmth. She had the power for swaying her world in favor of her brother to the injury of his wife, and she exercised the power, indifferent to the claims of innocence and right. "I always knew you were an unsympathetic woman, but I never thonzbt that you were an unscrupulous one untU now," Aubrey said to her unsparingly in that London world which she was using all the force of her unimpeachable position and her distinguished virtue to turn against her brother's wife. "-" ' "I sav what I believe," she replied, with chilly dignity and great untruth. "Ask your God to forgive you for your thoughts, then," said Aubrey. He felt all the distrust oi a man who knows the innocence of a woman before the calumny of her by other women. He knew that Hilda Sunbury in her soul wa3 fully aware of the purity of her brother's wife as he was; and heretlorts to stain the whiteness of Gladys' name, tb3t her brother's faults miht be dealt with leniently by the world, seemed to him as dark a crime as any murder; almost worse than crime, because more cowardly, since secure from all punishment. He himself was powerless to avenge it. Any protest of his made the position of the one whom he desired to protect more questionable. ' Almost everyone believed that he was her lover; he felt that, though no hint of it could ever be given to him. He knew it by the silence of others about her to him and before him ; he knew it by that instinct with which both men and women of sensitive temperament become conFcious of the opinion of their society about them, even when it is most carefully hidden from them; he knew it by the unwillingness of his sister, once so warmly her friend, to speak at all of Gladys to him. There is a silence around us at times upon the nama dearest to U3 which tells us without words that others know that i is thus dear. More than once he was tempted to write to or seek out Guilderoy; but he felt that by him, as by society at large, his interference on behalf of Gladys would be at once suspected and disregarded, might injure her greatly, and could do her no possible service. And his wrath was eo bitter against one who could remain absent, lulled in voluptuous pleasure, whilst her life was beating itself as painfully against its prison bars as any bird's, that he felt incapable of preserving any measure in rebuke, or even insult, if he once allowed himself to address his cousin eithr by spoken or by written word. Any quarrel between them would become of necessity national property for public comment. Rank, like guilt, hath paviliona but no secrecy." Meanwhile, despite all, she herself did not repent her choice. She would not, for all that the world could have given her, have continued to dwell in hia house and epend hU income. She would not at any price have borne the constant stare of wonder or the semi-smile of pity with which 6he would have been met in society by those whott spoken arorda would only have been of homage or of courtesy. Of all unendurable positions here would have been the most painful, had she been living amonpt his acquaintances an! f riends. Here at least ehe bad such kind of tranquility as solitude can afford. The fisher people on the shore asked her no nueslons; the bright bold eyes of the orchard bird had no cruel curiosity in them; and the nnobmrusive counsels written on the pages of the dead men of old had no inquisitivencps or censcre underlying them sv tbone of living speakers would have had. She was glad of such isolation, vs all thoee who suffer from humiliation m well m from calamity are glad of iL Cut it seemed to her as if the whole world were dead, and she alone living in it. All that stir and blaze and noise and change and pomp and pageantry of society, in which 6he had dwelt ever eince her marriage, were all pone as though she had never known them. A silience like that of a tomb seemed always around her. The steep white cliffs which rose in a semicircfe around Christalea were like the walls of a dungeon. She heard nothing from the misty dawns nntil the starless nights, except the rolling np of the waves upon the eands, the cry of the owla flitting at dusk amongst the boughs, the distant sLouta of the crews in the fishing cobles out at 8ca, or the shrill, weak voices of the old man and woman of the house gar

rulously quarreling over their work in tho garden, kitchen, cellar, or apple-house. Sometimes it seemed to her as if the years of her life with Guilderoy had been only the mere dream of a night She felt material losses, too, which it humiliated her to acknowledge. The homely and simple wav of life at Christslea were irksome and barren to her. All which she had despised, whilst 6he had enjoyed them, of the beauty, the graces, and the luxuries of existence were now lacking to her, and she missed them with a continual sense of needef them, which surprised and mortified her. She had believed herself wholly indifferent to thoe mere externals; those elegances and indulgences which in the imagined asceticism of her renunciation she had counted as wholly unnecessary to her. She missed them at every turn, at every moment; she realized how much they contributed to the ease and grace if not to the happiness. Her father had voluntarily resigned them all, and no expression of regret for them had ever escaoed his lips, and 6he had fancied she could emulate his philosophy. Hut the youth and the sex in her had not either his resignation or his endurance; and she suffered from the mere physical and material deprivation of her solitude as he had never done, having attained the tranquility of middle age and a scholar's stoicism. She had over-estimated her own strength, and underrated the power of memory and desire. The-little lonely house which had been the heaven of her childhood was the prison of her body and her spirit now. She had force of character enough to make her adhere to her decision, but she had not coldness of nature enough to make her at peace in it. She had known all the fullest joys of the passions, and all that tho world could give of pleasure and of admiration. She could not resign herself to these empty, joyless, stupid, eventless hours, which succeeded each other with eternal monotony as the lengths of gray worsted rolled off. the ball with which the old housekeeper knitted hose from noon to night, by tho hearth in the winter and in the porch in summer. It was in vain that she strove to find those consolations in study which her father had never failed to find; in vain that she opened the black-letter folios and the Latin volumes, in which asa child she had thought it her dearest privilege to read; in vain that even in her father's own manuscripts she found nothing of wisdom, although their precepts of patience were as true as those of Tublius Syrius. In vain did she seek those calm and golden counsels; they fell cold as icy water on the heat and pain of her restless sufftrin.'. Wh n she looked off from the written or the printed words she saw the face of her rival, and she heard the voice of her husband saying always: "She is the onlv woman whom I have ever loved. God help me!" Often she pushed the books and papers aside, and went out in all weathers, when the white rain was driving in fury over the moors, and when the waves were rising in a wall of foam to breaic in thunder on the beach. Nothing hurt her. She returned home often drenched to the skin, but snetook no harm. Groat pain, like great happiness, often bestows an almost more than mortal immunity from all bodily ailments. "And 1 am always well," she sometimes thought, almost in anger with nature for its too abundant gifts to her of health and strength, "He will think I do not care," she said to herself bitterly, "because I do not die!" She knew that, with a man's hasty and superficial ju Igment, ho was very likely to think ko if he thought of her at all. From the summit of the moor which rose behind the house she could see Ladysrood in the far distance. On the rare days of sunshine the gilded vanes and the zinc roofs glistened in distant points of light above the woods. The great house was left to that silence and darkness which has been so often its portion in other years. Once or twice some of tho old servants came to Christslea and begged to see her, for she was beloved by the household ; but she did not encourage them to return. She had sent for her dogs and for some of her books from there ; that was all. She would not even have any of her c'.othes. With an exaggeration of feeling, which even to Aubrey seemed morbid and overstrained, she stripped herself of everything which had become hers by her union with Guilderoy, and wore the plainest and the cheapest clothes that she could lind. But the beautiful and symmetrical lines of her form gave their own nobility to those humble stutfs; and in her rough 6erge, white or black, 6he had no less distinction than 6he had had in her pearl-sown velvet train at a state ball. The insincerities, the conventionalities, and the ft igned friendships of society had always been painful and oppressive to her, even when she had been comparatively happy amongst them. In her present circumstances they would have been an intolerable torture. She had her father's sensitive horror of compassion and of comment, and if alone and wretched at Christslea, she was, at the least, unmolested. Her retirement had been a nine days' wonder to her acquaintances; in a short time other mysteries, other scandals, other interests, took its place. She was not there ; others were. Society, with the indifference which follows it3 curiosity as surely as night follows day, ceased to ppe&k of her, and almost forgot that she existed. She had been left unopposed to abide by the choice she had made; and of her husband she heard nothing. lie had pa-ssed out of her existence as utterly as though he lay in his grave like her father. "If he were dead they would tell me," she thought; if he were dead they would remember, for a day at least, that she was his wife. Unconsciously to herself, her selection of Christlea, amongst other reasons, had been actuated by tho sense that there at least she would be sure to hear if any accident or illness befell him. She could not brlnir herself to ask for tidings of him even of Aubrey; but she knew that the lord of Ladysrood could havo no great ill happen to him without such at once becoming the common talk of the whole country side. Day and night ehe thought of him as she last seen and heard him, passionately declaring to her bis preference of her rival and hi3 allegiance to her. Yet even in that moment he had teemed to her stronger, manlier, more worthy, than he had seemed to her before in the incessant duplicates and the half-hearted intrigues of his other and less open infidelities. At least there was on his lips no lie, and in his acts no subterfuge. Even in the apony of the jealousy and the indignity which consumed her, she reached some faint perception of what her father had meant when he had bade her attain a love which could see as God saw, and pardon as men hope that their God pardons them. But it was only in brief, far separated, intervals that 6uch perception came to her; for the most part was devoured by those burning tortures of jealous imaginations which make every moment of existence almost insupportable to those they torment. She recovered her bodily strength quickly; sbo had too perfect health for it

to be easily overcome by any suffering of the mind or of the senses; tho vigorous and abounding life which filled her veins became a cruel mockery of tho weariness and barrenness of her empty days and starved affections. When she had thought of Christslea as a haven of rest in which she could let her sick soul lie hidden in peace, she had reraempered it as it had been with her father's presence filling it as with the benign and cheerful lieht of spiritual sunshine. She had forgotten that without him it could be only a lonely and dreary cottage like any other; a bald, poor, empty life, lived out face to faco with eternal losses and eternal regrets. What had been left her through her father was a trifle indeed ; no more than one of the head servants of Ladysrood was fiaidayear; but it was enough for such ew wants as her life here comprised, and the rental of the cottage she paid into the hands of the steward every three months. "My lord does not permit me to receive it," said the steward, in ir.finite perplexity and distress. "But I insist that you shall take it," she replied. "Pay it into the poor-box at Ladysrood parish church if you can do nothingelse. And it was paid to the pooraccordingly. She would not owe to him one square inch of the soil in which the stocks and the sweet-brier grew. Everything that was not the gift of her father, or of Aubrey and his sister, she had left behind her; all her costly wardrobes, her furs, her laces, her fans, her pictures, her jewels of all sorts, she left in his houses where they were, locked up in their chests and cabinets and cases, and the keys were deposited with his steward. "You have acted as though you were guilty, and not be," Aubrey said to her again and again, remonstrating with what seemed to him exaggerated feeling. "I could not have borne my life if I had kept any single thing of Ids," 6he answered, with an energy which was almost violence. "Everything he ever gave me is at Ladysrood, from my bridal pearls down to the last gift he bought for me." "I do not deny that there is nobility and renunciation in your withdrawal into this obscurity and begarary," replied Aubrey, "but it is a mistake. It has made a thing which the world need never have known become inevitably the world's talk. It may sound priggish, pretentious, or unfeeling perhaps, my dear, if I say so, but I have always held that people of our order have no right to gratify their own private vengeance, or even set themselves free from painful obligation, if by bo doing they bring the name they represent unon the common tongues of the crowd. This is a sense of the old nobleese oblige. We do not belong only to ourselves. We are a part of the honor of our nation. When we do anything on the spur of personal passion or personal injury, which brings those whose name we bear into disrepute, we are faithless to our traditions and our trusts." She sighed heavily, and the tears rolled off her lashes down her cheeks. She knew that he was right; no appeal to dignity and honor could leave untouched the inmost chords of the heart of John Vernon's daughter. "I will never do anything to lower his name, myself," she saiiLvnth emotion. "Sever, let me sulTer what I may." "That I aru ßure of," replied Aubrey; but, without thought, you have done what must inevitably draw tho comment and the censure of the world upon you both." "Not I. It was not my fault, though I have taken all blame for it He had left me openly for her. lie had resolved to do so before I set foot in Naples." "It need never have been known to the world in general if you had continued to be the mistress of his houses, and with time you might have regained his affections." A hot blush of deepest anger ecorched up the tears upon her cheeks. "I could not live like that ; I would not exist a day in such hypocrisy and degradation." "Whv will you talk of death, my dear? You will outlive me and Guilderoy by manwear. You are hardly more than a child still." "And do not children die? It is true death never takes those who wish for it; and I am alwavsweli cruelly well adsurdly well!" "This is ungrateful to Fate, my dear. Would vou be happier if you were lying on a sick bed, paralyzed with bodily pains torturing you, as well as mental?" "It would b3 a less harsh contrast. Oh, yes! I know that I am thankless, ungracious wicked, I dare say; but when I feel 6uch perfect health in me, such untiring strength, I wonder what are the use of them, why they stay with nie, why they could not make my little children strong enough too, so that they misrlit have lived. His oister always -ays it was my fault that they died. I do not think it

was. Yes; I wish your children had lived. You would not have fevered your lifo from his then." "Oh, yes, I should. I should have done just the same ; only I should have had them with me. He would not have taken them away from me. I heard him say once that a man was a brute who would take her children away from any woman, at any age, whatever the law might allow to him!" Aubrey looked at her in surprise. "My dear, when you can recognize Dualities nnd feelings in him like this why id you not have more patience with him? Human nature can not give unalloyed excellence, and human affections should not expect it. In what we love we are 6ure to find grave faults, and faults which often are of the kind which we of all others most disparage; but we must accept them just as we would accept blindness or lameness, or any physical accident in the person we loved." "That depends on the character of tho faults." "Does it not rather depend on our own character? I admit that what is vile or utterly false and feeble will kill affection, because it destroys the very roots in which it is planted. But the infidelities of the passions and the waywardness of the instincts are not sins so dark as to be unpardonable, they are indeed, faults almost inseparable from manhood." She looked at him wistfully. "Yon would be faithful to any woman yon loved, I think." There is no question of myself," taid Aubrey impatiently. "I havo had np time for the soft follies of life, and my mistress is England, who is a very exacting one. The question, under consideration now, is of my cousin. His offenses against you are very grave; but they are of a kind which you must have learned enough in these years to know are inseparable from such a temperament as his, and which I think every woman should force herself to overlook." "If che felt herself in the least loved by him or necessary to him, yes," ehe answered, with force and emotion. "All the question lies there. If he had ever loved me I might believe that he might care for me more or less again. But I knew I knew almost at once that he never did. As far as he can love at all ho

loves her. I am nothing to him but a per son who is in the way; who prevents him from marrving her; who incumbers his life and draws down unpleasant comments on him from the world. Yoa cannot alter that. There is nothing to touch or to appeal to in it.. "I think that you mistake that you exaggerate. Look in your mirror, and see if you are a woman to whom a man bo susceptible to female charms as he is, can ever be wholly indifferent." She smiled sadly, with that premature knowledge of the world which had so embittered her life with its disillusions. "If I were a stranger or a mere acquaintance I should have charm for him perhaps. Surely, my friend, you must understand that, being what I am to him, I have none." He looked at her again ; they were walking by the edge of the cliflt behind the house in one of the rare hours in which he permitted himself to visit her. It was a rough, rude day, with boisterous winds and a high sea tumbling black and frothy far down below them. The mists hung heavily over the inland landscape, and all the northern horizon, where the woods of Ladvsrood were, was hidden by a white, thick fog. But on the tableland of the cliffs the breeze was blowing strongly, and it gave warmth to her cheeks and brilliancy to her eyes, and b'ew some of the ßhort waves öf her hair in disorder upon her forehead. The wind and the cold and the air from the sea lent her a vividness of coloring and of expression which for the moment banished the gloom and sadness which were now habitual on her face. "It he could see her now," thought Aubrey, "surely he would come back to her." lie turned his own eyes from her and gazed out over the stormy 6ea, afraid of the emotions into which he might be hurried. His position grew daily more and more difficult as sole counsellor and friend of the desefted wife of hia own cousin; more and more painful to himself and invidious before others. Though passion had had little place in his life, his nature was far from passionless, and he realized that the time might come when it would be impossible for him to preserve this attitude of calm, paternal affection toward her. With all the unconsciousness of a woman whose thoughts and feelings are centered elsewhere, she unwittingly tempted him and tortured him a hundred times an hour. The very pleasure with which she welcomed him; the very sense he often expressed to him that he w:s her one consolation and protection, the very instinct of confidence in which she turned to and leaned on him in her loneliness, appealed more than any other thing could have done to a man of his wide and magnanimous temperament But they also tried his self-control more cruelly than any other thing, and often made him dread that his voluntarily accepted office would be one beyond his force. All the public obligations and national interests with which his life was filled, although they gave him that hold on duty and on honor which it would have been a crime to relax, his position before the country being the conspicuous one which it was, they yet couK not still in him either the rebellion of chained passions or the natnral yearnings of the heart. He was a man of higher principle and stronger force of self-denial than most; but he was also a man of warmer feeling than most, aud his love had never been weakened by being divided and frittered away in such innumerable amours as had swayed in their turn the fancies of Guilderoy. All the grave and absorbing claims upon his life from his party and his country could not prevent his unspoken attachment to Iiis cousin's wife growing daily and hourly in influence on him. But he had strength to keep it untold, for he felt that any expression of it would destroy the serenity of trust with which 6he looked to him in all things, and would alarm her, dismay her, and leave her utterly alone. He was her only friend; for all others whom she knew had fallen from her. Her life was dreary and dangerous as it was. With none to whom she could show her aching heart, it would become to her, he knew, a solitude beyond the strength of any woman so young to endure. She herself had that oblivion of possible calumny and of the imputation of low motives which is at once the strength and tho feebleness of noble natures, and leaves them exposed to the false constructions of those who, unheeded by them, observe them with malevolence and coarseness; such malevolence and such coarseness as are alwavs the foundations of the superficial judgments of society. She did not think for a moment of any possible misconstruction of that kindly and honest affection which Aubrey had shown her ever since he ha 1 first met herin the little Watteau cabinet atGuilderoyhou.se the day after her first drawing-room. He had been always there to e -rve her in any difficulty, to counsel her in any distress; it was natural that he should come to her now in her solitude. It seemed to her strange that he came so little; it seemed even unkind and unjust. She accused him in her thoughts of leaning to his cousin's side, of being so swayed by fa nilv considerations of pride and'sympathy of kindred that he palliated and excused his cousin's conduct to an extent which was injustice to herself. Woman-like, she required in her friend unlimited approval and undivided sentiment; hhe wanted to hear him tell her that 6he had done wholly right, waa wholly to be pitied and esteemed. The slightest reservation in sympathy struck on her aching heart as with the cold severity of censure. It made him afraid lor her sake to assume any prominence in her affairs or to take that part on her behalf with his cousin which it would have been his natural impulse to take. Neither Guilderoy nor the world would ever have credited him with the unselfish feelings which w ould have been his only motive power. He saw no way in which he could assist without more greatly injuring her. Ho knew, too, that if was'likely enough they would associate his own name with the cause of her voluntary retirement; and ho was conscious that every 6tep he took, and every word he spoke in her protection or defense, wonla only create more strongly the impression that he in gome way or another controlled her destinies. Nor did he disguise from her that all his family blamed her; even his sister blamed her. They were intolerant of a publicity an eccentricity which they could not conceal from society, and of which, with more or less undisguised inquisitiveness, the world around them weaned them incessantly for the explanation. They felt all the impatience of a proud and sensitive race at the needless wonder and conjecture which were aroused by her retirement to her father's cottaee. It had caused a )Ublic scandal where the world need lave known nothing of the differences between herself and her husband. True, she herself knew that Guilderoy had left never to return to her, and that such total separation from her had been tho price put by her rival on her reaccept-

ance of his vows ; but they did not know this, and had they known it, would have thought it a mere delirium on bis part which would pass away with time and with indulgence. They would have censured him 6trongly, but they would not have deemed her justified by his conduct in taking 6uch a course as gave her name to the whole world to tear in pieces in the excitement of its curiosity and baffled interrogation. The view which Hilda Sunbury took of her action was in the raln the view of all those powerful families with which Guilderoy was connected whether closely or distantly, by blood or alliance. They defended him because he belonged to them; and they visited her with their displeasure because they thought, as his sister did, that she had been grossly at fault, throughout, that she had never known how to obtain any influence over him, and that, having confirmed his faults by over-leniency to them in the first years of their marriage, she ha4.now injured him bv severity and severance when both were ill-timed and misunderstood. Though often when she was alone the conscience of Hilda Sunbury smote her, remembering the last words which she had heard John Vernon speak to her, yet in society she did not hesitate to exculpate her brother at his wife's cost. She did not Bcruple to hint, with many adroit phrases, at incompatability of temper, want of sympathy, coldness of feeling, which excused if they did not justify Guilderoy's indifference. "I 6ay nothing; I blame no one," Ehe replied continually to her questioners; but there was a tone in the words which implied a more injurious censure than any direct accusation would have done. And when Aubrey, angered and in earnest, told something of the truth, and took up tho defense of his cousin's wife, society listened to him with apparent deference, because he was a great person in more ways than one, and a leader of opinion, both social and political ; but. in his absence, 6miled and said that he had always been conspicuouslv attendant on her from the earliest days of her appearance in the world. Without the voices of the women of his house raised on her behalf, he could do but little in her service; and they, at their friendliest, thought of her as the duchess of Longleat did. who 6aid one day to him: "If she would come and stay with me, if she would hold her own at Ladysrood, if she would lead any natural life so that the world need not talk, I would support her in every way. But as long as she buries herself in this ridiculous isolation, as long as she virtually blames herself by her acceptance of an utterly inviduous r)sition, I can do nothing for her even if wished. You say that Guilderoy leaves her ; it may be bo ; but to all appearances it is she that leaves him. You sav that she has voluntarily given up her place in his life and all her rights ; I do not doubt you, but there is certainly every appearance that it is he who has refused them to her for some just cause: I sav just, because, were

it unjust, she would most certainly protest. I have always been attached to her; first because she pleased you, and then because she pleased me myself; but she had placed herself in an absurdly false position, even accepting, your account of : the causes which have led to it, and I do ; not see what anyone can possibly do to sustain her in it" "I thought vou more generous and less conventional' said Aubrey, angered deeply, "and I think that when I gave you my word that her conduct has not only been blameless but admirable, you might trust me enough to believe in my assurance." ' "My dear, I do not doubt that you give it in perfect good faith," said his sister. "Who could doubt your good faith who knows you? But you have alwavs been infatuated about her pardon me the word and I confess that I think your chivalry is doing her, in her present position, infinitely more harm than good. If she will come and stay with me I will receive her. What more can I say? I have always been greatly her friend. But so long as she condemns herself in society's opinion by living alone in a littlo cottage where she is only visible to you, no one can be of any solid service to her. You say that Evelyn is living openly with the Duchess Soria, It may be so. But the world does not believe it, because the Duchess Soria is a woman wise enough always to please and pamper the world ; and even if it be ever generally known, every one will declare that Lady Guilderoy could have only one or two courses open to her either to carry her case to the tribunals, which is what vulgar women do, or else to go on her usual routine as if 6he saw nothing and heard nothing, which is what women who are gentlewomen do all their lives long." "It is what she is doing." "No; what she is doing is a romantic, headstrong, idiotic thing, with which you have great sympathy, but with which no one else living will ever have the slightest patience. She is drawing the whole world's attention down upon her, and 110 woman can ever do that without being condemned by it. When the season comes, and she" is not in her house in town, not in her place at court, nor in her position in society, not in her home of Ladysrood, and everyone knows that she is living alone in the cottage her father died in, what do you suppose that society in general will say?" "If it can ever say the truth by any miracle, it will say that she is so living because she is too sensitive and too proud to accept tho maintenance of a man who is unfaithful to her without secrecy or excuse." "No; the world will pay nothing of the sort, for it does not believe in miracles. It will take the side which is popular; it always takes the side which is popular, and you know it does; it will exonerate Guilderoy, because it has never liked her: and, being essentially vulgar, which all society is in our day, it will utterly refuse to credit that any woman voluntarily surrenders all the material pleasures of a great income and a great position. When all our maidens are brought up only to think life worth living if they can 6ell themselves for those, who will be likely to hear with patience that Gladys alone of her sex despises them? You know, as well as I do, that though you proclaimed it in Westminster hall with sound of trumpets, you would not find any living creature to believe you." "I supposed that you would believe e," said Aubrey with, great anger and me. some emotion. Ermyntrude Longleat looked at him with tenderness and anxiety. "I have not said that I do" not, my dearest. But I know her intimately, and I know that her education has Riven her that unworldlineps and unwisdom which always appear either a crime or a lunacy to the world at large. I believe he.r motives to be what you Bay ; but I think the act they have resulted in ia deplorable. It must make the breach between her and Guilderoy irrevocable. You seem to me to remember that too little. You forget that alter all we are his relatives, not hers; and in ray opinion her first obligation was to him, not to her own pride. You would see this as I see it if your feel-

ings were not biased bv strong personal interests in her which blind3 you to common facts. Forgive me, dear, if I have 6aid too much." "It is precisely because we are his relatives, not hers, that common justice nnd common honor call on us to defend her against him," said Aubrey, passing over her latter words. "Guilderoy requires neither pity nor support; he does what he pleases; he would always do what he pleased if the whole world was burning. He leaves his wife much as he would any cocotte. He offers a different price, it is true, He has told his lawyers to give her half his income. But the feeling which governs him is the same as if he were Saying off a woman he wanted no more, e deems himself qu!(tepar la loury." "And she refuses?" "She refuses. She will live on the little her father left her. I confess I am amazed that such choice in so yourfg a woman does not move vou to admiration." "I cannot admire what is making the whole of society talk ill of a person who is related to me." "You speak as if you were blameless." "No; but if every woman in our world made such an an esdandre as she, society would be at an end." "be has made none. She has simply withdrawn herself to the life that she led before marriage." "And pray, what is that but a public separation?'' "It is a separation, certainly, but not a public one. It would be utterly ignoble if, because we are closely connected with him, we upheld him against a wholly innocent woman. She may not have acted judiciously, but she has most certainly acted as onjy a wholly innocent woman would act ; and she is as entirely sacrificed to him as if ho had killed her in the llesh, as he has in the spirit." His ßister listened to him with sorrow and apprehension. "I hope to heaven you will not be sacrificed to her in turn! ' she thoueht, but she forebore to say iL Aubrey was disappointed and angered at her want of sympathy, and took his leave of her, failing, for the first time in their lives, to influence her by his opinions and his desires. ( To be conti nurd next ircel:) ONE HUNDRED PERSONS DROWNED

By a. Collision netween a British Dark and an Unknown Stenmer. Loudon, Feb. 6. The Brtish bark Largo Bay, bound for Auckland, was towed to Pnithead to-day ia a sinking condition. She reports that on Monday night last 6he was in collision with an unknown, four-masted steamer off Beachy Head, and that the steamer was sunk with all on board. The seamen of the Largo Bay 6ay they are certain that the lost steamer carried, passengers, and they estimate that the crew and passengers together numbered at least one hundred persons. The steamer 6unk eight minutes after the collision occurred. THE GREAT STRIKE ENDED. All the New York Sorlace Roads RunningDisastrous Defeat For the K. of I New York, Feb. 6. The great tie-up is over. Some ears are running on all the surface roads, and on nearly all of them the full number are running. The reserve police are still kept on duty, and the patrol-wagons are still ia readiness, but the officers hare been withdrawn from most of the cars. The strikers are pouring back to the depots in search of w ork. Generally speaking, the roads are clad to have their old bauds if they come as individuals. The roaJs are unanimous in refusing to employ any man who comes as the representative ot a union or organization. The Second-nve. line is taking all the old men back. The Broadway line is receiving no applications from new men. On all the lines the men who are (riven work have to sicn a paper to the effect that they are not and will not be subject to the order of any labor organization. The result will be that there will not be a union car line in New York. This course waa adopted by the Third-ave. line on the last preceding strike, and they were able to run all during the strike just ended. The K. of L. appear to be fully conscious of the disastrous defeat they have sustained. Charles Walker, the Belt line conductor, who yesterday shot and killed James McGowan, a striker who assaulted him, was arraigned in court to-day and held to await the result of the inquest The president and another officer of the road were in court and offered to go on Walker's bond, stating that he was justified in the shooting. The Brooklyn Strike Off. BKOOKLYX, L. I., Feb. 6. The strikers tonight accepted Deacon Richardson's terras. They signed an agreement, in which willinguess was expressed to return to work only as individuals, and to take their places a nearly as possible as they were before the commencement of the strike. The document also stipulated that the recently engaged men should hare precedence over the Lite employes, who pledged the newly engaged men and traveling fiublic on the different lines immunity ironi urther assault and insult, and closing, the agreement declares the strike to be fully and entirely off. A VICTORY FOR THE "TIMES." Inspector Bon field nnd Capt. Schnack Indefinitely Suspended From OCice. CHICAGO. Feb. 6. Inspector BonCeld and Capt. Schaack were to-night indefinitely bus-. pended from office. Bonfidd and Schaack are the officials whom the Chicago Times has been charging with corruption in office, the specifications being thnt the pair were virtually in league with gamblers, ealoon-keepers, thieves and the demi monde. The first result of the charcen was the immediate tiling of libel suits against the Tmet, and these suits were added to daily nntil the total amount of damages asked from the newspaper by tlie officers and others is nearly a million and a-half dollars. Suspended, in company with the inspector and captain, is Detective Lmvenstein, the officer who, after a terrible hand-to-hand strnc5.de, succeeded in arresting Anarchist Louis Linjrg. The suspension ord.T is signed by Mayor Roche, who was nominated by the republicans in the excitement following the Haymarket affair and elected on an anti-red flag platform. SALVATION ARMY TOUGHS. They Attack the Police and Rescue Their Comrades Under Arrest. ISHPEMINO, Mich., Feb. 5. The salvation army paraded yesterday afternoon. So mnch noise was made that a policeman ordered them to move on. One ot the noldiera defied the officer and was arrested but quickly rescued. The chief of police and other officers appeared on the scene and made neveral arrests. A mob followed the police to the city jail and rescued all but one prisoner. An etlort will be made to-day to arrest and punish the leaders of the mob. The army has many adherent here and the Ptrnjele between the adherents and the authorities, it is thought, will result in trouble. W omen Raid m Saloon. Lrscoiy, Neb., Feb. 6. Word h been received from Prower, Adams county, that a band of fifty prominent ladies of that county made a crusade on a saloon and gambling honse at that plane Mondaj night demolishing the entire establishment. The ladles attacked the building when It was crowded, with their aprons full of lumps of coal, breaking every window-glass and cleaning out the establishment. The ioinates scattered in eery direction, some of the loungers beiug husbands of the women. Whisky and beer flowed freely In the gutter. The place hat bad a hard reputation for idling liquor without a license.

TO ADMIT TERRITORIES.

FINAL ACTION BY THE COMMITTEE. They Decide to Report Favorably the Omni hue BUI Providing; Enabling Acta For All the Territories Except Utah A Little Opposition. WAsnrscTO, Feb. 5. The house ccamifrtee on territories held their regular meetinj this morning and took final action on the bill for the admission of Utah and the omnibus bill, providing an enablin? act for the admission of the territories of Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona as states of the Union. It was decided, although not unanimously, in rezard to the Utah matter, to appoint a sub committee of five mem bers, with Representative Springer as chair man, to draft a report, to the eifect that, owing to the lateness of the session, it would be impracticable to 6-'Cure the passage of the pt-ndincr bill. The sub-committe was authorized to make its report exhaustive in order to Rive the public the benefits of the, hearing-, held by the committee on the proposition to admit the t?rritory. This report will be submitted to the full committee as soon as it is finished. The committee also decided to report favorably the omnibus bill providia enabling acts for the admission of the other territories above named. The vote in committee, was practically unanimous on this proposition, although one or two members of the committee expressed themselves as opposed to the omnibus system, and preferred the admission of these territories singly. MR. POSEY IN CONGRESS. lie Takes 11 Oath Conference Report on the XiMnjiwn XI ill Agreed To. Mr. Browne (Ind.) presented the credentials of Frank B. Posey, elected to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of A. P. Ilovey. The credentials having been read, Mr. Posey took the oath as representative from the First congressional district of Indiana. The speaker having laid before the house a message from the president, giving the terms of an agreement between the United States and the Creek Dation of Indians for the cession of a portion of the Indian lands to the United States, it was referred to the committee on, Indian alTairs, and leave granted that committee to report thereon at any time. The consideration of the conference report on the Xicaraeuan canal bill was then resumed, it being agreed that debate should be closed at 3 o'clock. Mr. (hipman (Mich.) 6aid that he had favored the bill as it c:ime from the senate. II had not favored it hs it passed the house, the amendments which had been placed upon it having served to emasculate it. Thev had been incorporated on the idea that the United States should be free from entangling alliances, and that it should isolate itself. The day for isolation had passed. Voices from all parta of the world were warning the United States of this voices from the Isthmus, from Canada, from Samoa, from wherever foreign nations had planted their flajs. The attempt to makd it impracticable for American enterprise to plant itself in foreign countries was too late. The day had passed and the time had come for a haughty and dictatorial American policy and certainly a wise American policy. After further debate the conference report was agreed to yeas, 177; nays, CO. MURDER AND SUICIDE. A Chicago Reporter Shoots Ills Wife and Then Kills Himself. CniCAGO, Feb. ß. The police department was this morning notified that a man named W. S. Bradley had shot and killed bis wife and then committed suicide at the hotel Cortlandt, at the corner of Wabash-ave. and Adain-st Both were shot through the head and died instantly. Walter S. Bradley was a member of an old and respectable famiiy in this city. V. II. Bradley, clerk of the U. S. court, and Francis Bradley of the firm of Baird fc Bradley, dealers in real estate, were his uncles. Mr3. Bradley was a Miss Hathaway, and is a sister of Charles H. Hathaway of the Corn exchange national bank. The couple took rooms at the hotel Cort landt about about a week a::o. Yesterday they Quarreled and Mr. Bradley left the hotel. Thie morning he returned and requested an interview with his wife, awaiting her in the hotel parlor. When she came down, the quarrel was renewed and the result wr.s death to both of them. This is the third tragedy of the kind that has taken place here within a week. Both were employed by a morning paper the husband as a reporter and the wife as literary editor. Bradley was a "black sheep" in the fara ily. He was at one time employed by the Pullman palace car company, but was convicted of embezzlement and was condemned to a year's imprisonment in the penitentiary, from which lie was released four or five monthi ago. "JACK THE RIPPER" Or An Imitator at Work in Central Amerlo Six Marders. Maxagüa, Nicaragua, via New Orleans, Feb. C Either "Jack the Ripper" of White Chapel has emigrated from the scene of his ghastly murders, or he has found one or more imitaton in this part of Central America. The people have been greatly aroused by six of the most atrocious murders evf-r committed within the limits of this city. The a-sassin has vanished and left no traces for identification. All the victims were women of the character who met their fate at the hands of the London murderer. They were found murdered just as mysteriously and the evidences point to almost identical methods. Two were found butchered out of all recognition. Even their faces were most horribly slashed and in the cases of all the others their persons were frightfully dislicured. Like "Jack: the Ripper' b" victims they have been found in out of the way places. Two of the victims were possessed of cau ly jewelry and from that it ia urged that the mysterious murderer has not committed the crimes for robbery. In fact, ia almost every detail, the crirr-es and characteristics are identical with the White Chapel horrors. ELECTION CORRUPTERS CAUGHT. Samuel J. Carpenter, the Republican Vote lluyer. Heads the L.it, The U. S. marshal's- oSice is these days hold inga reception for republican politicians, and they are accepting the invitation to come in in great numbers. The invitations are very urgent, and no "regrets" arc accepted. Samuel J. Carpenter, the truly pood republican of Shelby and Pecatur counties, who bribed hia wny into the senate, was kicked out, and inor tryimr to . get back, was the first caller. 8id Conner and J. B. Kobin.on accompanied him and signed a bond for $-VXl for his appearance to nnswer to a charge of bribery. James Orr. William Williams and Benjamin J. Kenton, all of Nineveh, each (rave bond in the mm of $5001 They are charged with election frauds. Alex A. Davison, cx-postmaster of Sejmoar. was indicted for a technical embezzlement and gave bonds. THE PRESIDENT AND MRS. CLEVELAND In Jfew Torb Presumably to Inspect Thsia PronprctiTe Apartments. Nrw obk, Feb. C. President Cleveland, Mrs. Cleveland and Col. Dan Lamont arrived in town this mornin? and are stopping at th Victoria hotel. It ia supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland have come to inspect their prospective apartments in the Gerlachandto arrance (or their decoration. The roancer of the hotel is unable to state how long hia distinguished guesta wiil remain here. The Canadian Won. MOSTK'AL, Feb. A prize fight for tlOO took pltce lat night st Cote St. Antoine between a Canadian and an American, who are supposed to be Guthrie and Bush. The affair was kept verr quiet, the rice of ad mission beintt ?20. After several bar ought rounds the Canadiaa ras declared Tictorkttl