Indiana State Sentinel, Volume 35, Number 4, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 February 1889 — Page 1

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TOL. XXXY NO. 4. INDIANAPOLIS. WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 27. 1889. OXE DOLLAR PER YEAR.

GU ILDEROY

BYOUIDÄ Author of "Under Two Flags," "Two Little Wooden Shoes," "Chandos," "Don Gesaaldo," Etc Now first pubLUhe.1. All rights referred. CIIAPTER LII. A few days later Guilderoy sent to ono of his men of business to come to Venice. There was an intricate question pending in England affecting some leases on one of his estates, which afforded reason enough to summon hin land agent to a personal conference. When the matter had been discussed in its financial and legal aspects, he inquired as carelessly as he could: "And what of Lady Guilderoy? Is she veil? Is she always living in the house her father had at Christslea?" Iiis agent answered in the affirmative, feeling on his part considerable embarrassment, for this separation, into which the law did not enter, this unexplained and unregulated severance, was little understood by any oi his people. "And does she keep berself wholly withdrawn from the world?" he added. "Does she 6ee no one? I regret it if it is eo; the is too young for such solitude." "She Bees no one," said the man of business, more and more in doubt as to what answers he should make. "At least Lord Aubrey comes sometimes, a3 no doubt your lordship knows." Guilderoy's face flushed. "Yes, I have asked him to do so," he said quickly. It was a falsehood, but it was an inf tinctive one to save her from suspicion. He inquired no more. The agent returned home with a doubt, which had not before visited him, that Lady Guilderoy was not so wholly innocent as she looked." "After all," thought the man, She keeps him out of Enjrland, bo it is 6he w ho must be to blame, there can be no doubt of that." He had told Aubrey himself that it was r pity that ho had not married her, and he had thought so honestly. They would have been perfectly sympathetic to one another. Yet the knowledge that the?e sympathies which were between them had now fall leisure and free scope to be developed and indulged in any way they chose. in the absolute loneliness of ChrisisJca, was detestabb to bin. After all, he thought, he could not refuso her the liberty which he had himself taken. It would have seemed to him mean and unworthy to enjoy a freedom for himself which he did not accord to her. He had the large morality, or immorality, of a man of the world ; if ehe could console herself in any way for the disorder and desolation which he had brought into her life, he would be a brute to grudge it to her. So he reasoned. He had put her out of his own existence; he could not complain if 6he mado a separate life for herself. And yet the idea of his cousin aione with her in those little quiet roorua of Christelen was disagreeable to him. She bad Baid that she would always respect the honor of his name; but those were only words, though they might have been words sincerely meant when thev were spoken. He knew that the heart of" any woman once seriously involved will force her to abandon her strongest principles, as the warmth of eummer forces the wiliow and the sycamore to drop their spring-time catkin. And he thought of her more than he had ever done before. She had grown very vague to him. His memory had but seldom reverted to her. He possessed the happy faculty of being able to dismiss from his mind what he did not wish to think of; and the coldness, the harshness, and the scorn with which phe had spoken to him in their last interview had hardened his heart utterly against her. But 6ince the words of his man of business, few and trite thouzh they were, the manner of her life came before hira more painfully, more positively. The little house at Christslea and the recollection of John Vernon carne to his recollection with painful clearness. lie remembered the first day that he had gone thither and been welcomed with such frank cordiality and simplicity. He had repaid the welcome ill; he knew it. and, being by nature generous, the sense of his lack of generosity oppressed him with a hense of error which all the moralists on earth would never have succeeded in bringing home to him. As he walked in the glad sunshine by the banks of the Brenta, lie thought of Christslea as he knew that it must be then bleak, cold, gray, cheerless, with dull angry waters, and high winds blowing through black, leafless trees, and lonely moorlands shrouded in icy mists. Winter on that coast had always eeemed to him an unendurab'e and hateful thing; and yet she was living through it by deliberate choice, nnccmpanioned, unfriended, and alone. Nay not always alone. She had Aubrey. Aubrey was a man of scrupulous honor he knew; but he also knew that there are hours in the lives of all those who love in which resistance and strength sleep like the tired Samson in the noon siesta. He knew, too, that his own conduct had given him ro title to complain of whatever advantage any other man might take of his absence. Aubrey waa there, sometimes at least, in such familiar intercourse as solitude in the country perforce creates. The idea was not welcome to him. There had been occasionally in him a vague impatience of the high esteem in which ehe held his cousin, and the comparison which ehe had openly drawn more than once between their manner of liie. Aubrey had been indifferent to women, but women had never been indifferent to him ; his person, bis intellect, and his fame were all euch ma might well captivate a poetic and serious woman such as Gladys was, especially if united to a romantic and chivalrous devotion, aided by the auxiliaries of solitude and misfortune. Guilderov, who was so profoundly rersed in the contradictions and intricacies of the feminine temperament, knew that there is no moment at which it is so susceptible to attachment as that in which it is bruised and bleedintrfrotn the offenses and the wounds of desertion. Well, if it were so, he told himself, he had no rizht to object to it, or to censure her : he had no possible title to ask her to leaJ a joyless, passionless existence in the full flower oi her youth and her beauty.

He had taken his own freedom, his happi ness as he conceived it to be; he had no right whatsoever to deny any possible compensation to her. And yet his pride was hurt at the possibility, though his affections wre wholly indifferent to it. The subject occupied his thoughts when he was alone to an extent which surprised himself, and rendered him at times preoccupied when in society, or even when alone with the woman he loved. The letters of his sister had been so incesssant and so monotonous in their perpetual invective and reproach that he had wholly ceased to reply to them, and of late had long let them lie unopened. Her reproaches had alwavs incensed him; and now that he felt they had much rea-on for their outcry, they were trebly irritating and distasteful to him. But when his man of business had left him he remembered them and broke the seals of two or three of the later ones, and glanced rapidly over their contents, passing over their oft-repeated conjurations and condemnations in search of the recurrence of his cousin's name. He found it more than once. In the last letter, which had a date of two months past, the writer wrote: "The whole world is. I think, in accord in attributing your wife's retreat to the influence of your cousin. It may be right, it may be wrong; but it is certain that it thinks that he, much more than you, has had power to determine her selection. I I give no opinion myself. Of course I always saw that he was more than commonly attached to her; but he is a man of honor, and be would not throw his name to the four winds of earth as you do yours for the sake of any woman. Still, he is mortal, and the position he occupies is at once very dangerous and very insidnous in its appeal to his sympathies. He is the only erson whom ehe ever sees, and the onlv friend who is admitted to advise her. Iiis Bister has repeatedly argued with him to induce him to see this as the world sees it; but always in vain. He apEears to consider that he is the natural fir to the duties which you have declined to fulfill to what extent do you choose hin to be so? Whatever may happen, you cannot complain that it happens to you undeservedly." He read the lines with ercat wrath and intolerant impatience; then tore the letter up and with it those of similar strain which had preceded it. She was always a mischief-maker, seeing what did not exist, straining at gnats, weaving ropes of moonshine, si tting friend against friend, anil sowing the seed3 of disunion under the plausible pretext, and, perhaps, in the honet persuasion, that she was pleasing Gd and serving man. He hau always known her to be like that ever since he had been of age enough to be at all observant of what she did; 6he was a good woman yes like thousands and tens of thousands of good women, who have all the virtues in their own persons but have not in their temperaments one chord of sympathy, ono fiber of indulgence, one touch of that erring human nature which makes the world akin, one single impulse of that sweet and tender kindness which sooths and stil s mid comforts maladies which it can uot cure. A perfectly good woman yes and as utterly incapable of doing any real good by her influence as though she were tho vilest of her sex. How many of them there are on earth, and how many men have lived to curse them as they never cursed the sinners! He threw the fragments of her letters with hatred into tho waiers of the canal beneath his window. He knew the irrepressible pleasure in her own accuracy of prediction, in the vindication of her own forebodings by the present facts, w hich had been in her, all unknown to her, while ehe bad penned all the invectives and lamentations which had preceded and followed her introduction of Aubrey's name. Some hatred he felt against himself, whose actions had given up the fair u:ime of Gladys to the malevolent speculation of the world and to the gratified jealousies of his sister. He remembered her as he had seen her first in her father's garden in the late autumn afternoon, with the dog's head leaning against her knee and the red foliage of the early autumn touching her hair. What a base return he had given her for that sincere and simple welcome! She ha 1 spoiled his life innocently, and he bad spoiled hers criminally. Absolve himself as he would, his conscience perpetually returned to convict him of his offense. "He forgot the intervening years, and only thought of her as John Vernon's daughter; the fair and innocent child of the days before her marriage. His feelings were capricious and ephemeral, but they rarely lacked generosity; and he" felt that he to her had been ungenerous, that he had not allowed enough for her youth and her inexperience, that he brought rgainst her ignorance all the unequal forces of worldly knowledge and trained intelligence, and that be had received her life into his hands in the mere unformed clay of girlhood only to throw it in pieces among the potsherd's of calumny when it bad become the full amphora of womanhood. Again and again this image of her recurred to him with increasing reproach. Ho felt an uneasy and restless wish to return to Iiis own country for a moment, and to see for himself wha't truth there was in all these stories of Aubrey's visits to her. He did not doubt the facts; but he doubted, or, rather, he refused to believe, the construction put on them by others. Aubrey liad always been h r friend; he certainly would not have f eased to be so; but from friendship to love there were distaii'-es which he did not crclitthat his cousin would ever pass. The honor which fenced in the wives of other men had never seemed to Guilderoy a very high or impassable fence; but the honor which surrounded his own seemed to him sacred and high as heaven. Yet he thought often, and with ever-increasing irritation, of that stormy and sorrowful isolation of Christslea in the winter ßolstice which wns again so near. His anger deepened against her with his remorse. She had rejected all his offers, she bad withdrawn herself from his home, 6he had brought the condemnation and observation of the world upon him by the extravagance and strangeness of her actions. So he thought and so he reasoned to himself; but all his anger could not extinguish his consciousness of having drawn her into a position which scarcely any woman of her years could possibly issue from unharmed and unslandered. He had thought her cold, irresponsive, unsympathetic; but he had been always sensible of the fineness and purity of the many qualities of her character, and he knew that they were those to which he could alone now look for self-controi and self-sacrifice strong enough to bear her unharmed through such an ordeal of isolation and abandonment. "If I could speak to her," he thought, more than once; but this was forbidden him by ten thousand reasons. His word had been passed to the woman whom he loved ; his desires had been granted him on a condition which was the more imIerious because based solelvon his honor, le knew that if he again broke his word to her, even though in the very smallest

and slightest thing, he would fall lower than the lowest iu her sight, and would be degraded bevond words in his own forever. He had received the jrifts of her life on certain terms which were a millionfold more binding on him because merely left to his own good faith. His knowledge of Beatrice Soria told him that the meanest galley-slave at work on the quays of Naples would seem to her infinitely manlier and worthier than he if in the merest trifle he transgressed tho stipulation she had made. She had left him wholly free to accept or refuse her condition, but she had understood, and had the right to understand, that the condition, if accepted, was inviolate. He did not reproach her for it; she could have asked no less, looking both to the past and to the future. Nor could he have said that he regretted it, for he was still happy, although one fear and one remorse ass died him the fear that though he had again recovered his position toward her, he hail never recovered his influence over her, and the remorse that he had been disloval to the promises he had given to John Vernon. In all his faults and follies he had been a man of delicate honor, as the world construes the conventional honor it demands of a gentleman; he had never given the world the title to deride or to disdain him ; he had always been careful to keep his name out of the mud of public -discussion and conjecture; and he was morbidly sen eitive to tho fact that for the first time in the history of his race, a shadow, if not a stain, had been cast upon his name one which might deepen and darken as the years passed away, and most probably would do 60, whilst he would be powerless to efface it and would have but himself to thank for it. In the conflict of feelings which had agitated him in his last interview with his wife, he had not reflected on the innumerable consequences inevitable on his action. He had only seen, on the one 6ide, a woman whom ho passionately regretted and loved, and on tne other a woman who chilled, fretted, offended, and alienated him. He had chosen between them on a natural impulse, with scarce a moment's hesitation ; and he had cast hardly a thought to the many difficulties and penalties which would follow on his choice. All his life-long things had gone well with him. The most serious sorrow of it had heen his repentance for his rupture with Beatrice Soria, and she had been entirely right when she had told him that all the phases of his love had been rather gallantry than passion. Deep and painful emotions were novel to him and hateful. But they now forced their way into his thoughts, and would not be gainsaid. He knew well the estimates of the men of the world; their large intolerance of many, and their tolerance of some few, things. He knew that amongst these few must be his own action in driving so young and blameless a worum as his wife into her present position. He knew that his contemporaries, however elastic in judgment, must be now his severest critics, not for what he had done as for how he had done it. He had put himself outside the pale oi those easy indulgences which the world willingly accords so long ns no vio'ence is offered to its codes of convention. He was proud, and b:s pride was hurt at the thought of how all his friends and acquaintances were speaking of him whenever they remembered him at all; and they would so remember because of the prominence of Aubrey's name. With little right or justice in his anger, he grew each day more deeply angered with his cousin. He persuaded himself that it must have been Aubrey's influence w hich had decided so young a woman as Gladys to lead so strange and wretched a life. I left her everything she could want or wish, he thought in his self-justification. She was free to live in the world at her pleasure; I bad taken care that no blame should rest on her; and I had given her the half of all I possessed; she might have been happy, quite happy, in her own way if 6he had chosen; it was not I who exiled her to a cottage bv a lonely weather-beaten shore, and bade her exist on the pittance that came to her from her father. Why could she not have continued to enjoy all those material consolations and compensations with which be had so liberally surrounded her? If she had done that, his conscience would have been at rest, and the world would have seen in their separation nothing but a mutual and excusable agreement to lead their lives apart. It must have been Aubrey, he reasoned, who h;id sustained her in her headstrong and extravagant resolution; it was just such a choice as would commend itself to him, austere, romantic, and unworldly. After a few weeks of irresolution and of many agitating and conflicting impulses, he said abruptly and with much embarrassment to the Duchess Soria. "It is absolutely necessary that I should goto Kngland. Would you allow and not misconstrue it?" She looked at him some moments before she replied: "My dear, I am not your keeper. And I suppose you have honor?" H felt himself color under the profound pazo of her deep eyes. He kissed her hand with emotion: "I thank you," he said simply ; he knew that he had once given her every cause to mistrust him forever. Her confidence in him seemed very noble, and appealed to him as no expressions of doubt or of fear could have done. "lam utterly unworthy öf her 1" he thought bitterly. How often his suspicions had wronged her in days that were gone by ; how little fitted he had been to be the supreme passion of such a woman's life. Several days passed by; she asked him neither why he lingered nor when he would go. That reserve in one whom he had given every title to doubt his word in their past relations eeemed to him very magnanimous. He loved her, he thought, more than he had ever loved her, but all the strength of his admiration could not drive out from hira the restless haunting remembrance of what might be then being taid and being done in England. It was now well-nigh mid-winter; there, dreary, misty, cold, with drifting snows; here, gay, luminous, brilliant, with gorgeous sunsets and buoyant wind-tossed seas. "I shall be away but a very little while," he said to her with hesitation. "Go as you will," she answered him. He felt that these reins let fall thus upon his neck did in truth and honor hold him more closely than all chains. "Ah! if only you had always been as kind and as generous," he murmured, thinking of those other days, when ber impetuous demands and her violent exactions had chafed his soul into revolt. She smiled with a little sadness. "Alas, alas!" she thought, "men should not quarrel a they do with our jealousies and importunities; when we cease to feel them life has taken the tenderest fiber out of our hearts. I am never jealous of him now; but sometimes I wish to heaven that it were only possible that 1 could be I

It is those tempests of folly which give birth to the sweetest of our jovs." She would have given half that she possessed could she only once more have felt all tho?e intense and exquisite pains which are the procreation of the richest joys, could only his absence have tortured her, his presence intoxicated her, as it had once done. Was it mere caprice or wantonness of fate that now, when he was eo utterly her own in all ways, she had so little gladness in her empire? Was it indifference or pride, or really magnanimity which made her leave him unquestioned to go whither he would? "Nay," she thought, and rightly. "He could not now be faithless to his promise if he would. The handless and footless god that emote Glaucus would smite him for me. He would be tho lowest of the low." And she let him go, and asked him nothing. "Alas !" she thought again. "It is when men most curse us that they bless us most. All that immense love which makes them into the deities of our lives only wearies them, satiates them, and makes ihein cold and fretful; and yet, if only tbey knew bow much better we are when we can still feel it! what poor, innocent, fond fools, though so burdensome to them! And when it is gone, it goes forever, and something which was best in ns is gone too, and we live for our stnses, or for our triumphs, or for our intelligences, but we live for a great love no more! But wo have learned wisdom, and wit comes to us where adoration has died, and our lovers find us calmer, and they deem their los3 their gain fools! fools! both we and they!" CHAPTER LIII. He went without halt across Europe to his own country ; the .weather was cold and dark, the seas were stormy, the winds piercingly cold; after the radiance and softness of the land he had left, it seemed to him like entering some dreary Gehenna of tormented and icv air. He traveled straightway to Ladysrood, and went thither unannounced. He had old and faithful servants who kept all others of the household in obedience and subiection, but the great house had a desolate air in its utter abandonment. There was little light, little warmth; all the furniture of the rooms was shrouded in its linen coverings, and only in the central hall was there a large fire burning. His step Bounded hollow on the floors, from which their zealous thrift bad removed the carpets, and the hastily-lit lamps struggled feebly against the general gloom. "I have always told you to keep the bouse as perfectly ready as though you expected me at any moment," he said with anger. The people were afraid to reply that after so many months of absence his arrival had seemed to thera the most unlikely of all possible chances. The silence, the coldness, and the loneliness of his home chilled him to the bone. It seemed an emblem of that solitude to which Gladys was condemned in her youth. The night was very cold, and one of the wild winter storn.s of the southwest country raged without till until morning. He slept very little, and rose from his Ik. d unreireelieu. He regretted that he had come there. He sighed for the evergreen orange and magnolia groves, the purpling violets, the unfrozen fountains, the dancing sun-rays of the glad gardens of the Soria palace. Here was the winter of tho earth and the winter of the soul. He cursed the morbid restlessness, the uneasy discontent, which had drawn him from his paradise. Now tlit.t he was here, what more could he know than he knew? He could not seek bis wife; the woman whom he loved had trusted him ; he bad too much good faith and sentiment of honor left in him not to be true to an unwritten bond. The storm had subsided with dawn, but the day was dull and heavy, theskies were obscured, and the air was charged with vapor. The sense of immense weariness and depression, w hich had in other years always come upon him in England in winter, returned upon him a thousandfold now. He parsed the forenoon in his library, in intercourse with his men of business and stewards, in the examination of those questions of leasehold and freehold, of forest rights and moor rights, of rents and investments, which had been tho ostensible reason of bis momentary return home. It was well for him that those who served him bad truly bis interest at heart, for he heeded very little the explanations which they gave him, and signed many papers w ithout know ing very clearly why he did so. He was thinking, as be apparently attended to the prolix arguments of his visitants of the day, when, in that chamber, he had written the letter which had broken off his relations with Beatrice Soria. He was overwhelmed with the greatness of her pardon w hen he thought of that unutterable insult to the proudest of all living women. Then his memories wandered away from her to that other day when he had held the Hone ooen for a young girl to read, and watched her first blush rise like sunrise over her fair face. It was only five years before, and in those five years what suffering ho had caused to both these women ; and yet how well one at least still loved him, "if the other what of the other? even if ehe had been even too passionless to care for him, yet how much the had lost through him! The tedious gray day wore away slowly, most of its hours occupied with prosaic details and lull discussions of ways and means, of law and equity, of forestry and finance, and all the various matters of importance which grow out of the management oi great estates and of a great fortune. It was dark when his people left him: he remained in the library beside the hearth, where there was not even a dog to welcome him. "Where is Kenneth?" he asked of a servant who came at that moment to light the chandeliers. Kenneth was a collie which had been a chief favorite with both himself and Gladys. The man hesitated with some embarrassment as to how he should reply. "Where are Kenneth and the other housedogs?" repeated his master impatiently. The servant answered timidly that her ladyship had sent for them to Christslea a year ago. "Ah, of course, they were hers," Guilderoy replied quickly, regretful of his question. She had been quite within her right to take the dogs, nor did he grudge her their innocent companionship; but the kind brown eves of Kenneth and his comrades, if they had been there to look at him, would have seemed to break the spell of this horrible loneliness, to ease the burden of these painful memories which weighed on him. The evening was yet more gloomy than the day. He paced to and fro the suite of the Queen Anne apartments wearily anil drearily. They were all restored to their fullest comfort, and had all that light and warmth and the fragrance of hot-house flowers could bring to them, but to him thev More immeasurably, unconscionably melancholy. Alibis past life came before him in those solitary hours, lie recalled all his child

ish ideals, his boy's admiration of great men, his vague dreams as a youth of some greatness which he would achieve, some added luster which he would bring to his name and race. Where had all these gone? In what had all these ended? In the lassitude and languor of satiety, in the nerveless indifference of a polished pessimist, in the evaporated fumes ot innumerable pleasures quickly tasted and exhausted. "At least I have enjoyed," he thought. "Could Aubrev say ns much?" But though his philosophy consoled, his conscience did not Bitisfy him. It was not for mere self-indulgence alone that his fathers had lived; it was not for mere eelf-abandonment that his country had been made what it once had been. Great men had, indeed, in ail ages been lovers of pleasure, but pleasure bad been their pastime not their sole pursuit. He wa.ked to and fro the length of the now warm and illuminated rooms, and bis surveys of Iiis past brought him more dissatisfaction than contentment. To men he knew that he seemed but an idler; to women, perhaps, beseemed a traitor. The vision of his wife, alone in that lonely little house, amongst the dense sea fogs and the bare black orchards, haunted hiui with pain ; and the memory of the woman whom he loved, as he had left her in the splendor of her beauty, and of the golden evening sunlight pouring through her painted chamber, haunted hira with that irresistible and unrestricted power which she always possessed over him. In the depression of his solitary musings he seemed in his own sight " unworthy of either of them, and wholly undeserving of their constancy or their regret. With the morning hours of the following day he rode toward Christslea. Before he slept lie sent for the old housekeeper of Ladysrood. She had been with his mother on her death-bed, and had nursed and played with him as a child. He could ask of her what he could not bring himself to ask of any of the men. "Tell me, Margaret," be said to her as soon as she stood before him in the warm red drawing-room, where John Vernon had bade his daughter live for honor if Bhe could not live for happiness "tell me, do you ever ee my wife? The old woman was 6ilent for a while: the tears started to her eyes. "Alas, mv dear lord." that ever you should have to ask me that!" she murmured. "Never mind "why I aek you; answer me. Do you often see her or ever see her?" "I have Been her very rarely, my lord, and never to speak to; it was in the open pir, and my ladv shunned me." "How does she loox?" "She looks older, but she looks well,

j my. lord. The air is very fine and strong at Chnstslea." Guilderoy felt a sense of mortification, for which he hated himself. "She looks well, do you say?" "Not ill, my lord, but much older." "You must hear of her often from the servants or the villagers?" "There is little to hear, my lord." "You mean that 6he leads such a retired, such a secluded life?" "That is so, my lord. It is the same life as her father led: it suited him, ro doubt, but it cannot suit a childless woman of her years." Guilderoy sighed impatiently. "It was her own choice." The housekeeper was silent; ehe respected him too much to contradict him, and she respected truth too well to agree with him. "She has all the dogs, they say ?" he asked. "Yes, my lord; ehe was ever very fond of the tykes." "And how does she spend her time?" "Heading, they 6ay, my lord, when she is indoors; and always out when the weather holds, and oftiimes even when it is very bad." "And whom does Bhe eee?" "No one, I believe, my lord." "Not my sister?" "Her ladyship has never been nigh her." He hesitated a moment, then said: "But she receives visits from my cousin Aubrey, I am sure?" "Well, my lord, he is the only one of his family who has Btood by her." "I am grateful to him." Nevertheless his face flushed with an emotion which was not one of pleasure. "Is he often there?" "Often, my lord, one may say, for one who is ever toiling for tho country as he is, and has is so little time left to himself." "It is very good of him, Margaret. Good night." You may go, The old woman curtsied, and withdrew; but as she drew near the door she took courage and came a few steps back toward him. "My dear lord, if I may make so bold, my "lady is very young to be left in that lonely life. Maybe 6he chose it, but some say she was drove to it. She may have her fault, but she has more virtues. And and she has lost her two children, my lord. Will you not go and see her now you are here, if only for the sake of that one memory, my lord?" Guilderoy's eyes grew dim. "No, no.'l can not do that," he eaid hastily and sternly. "But you are a good woman to urge it, Margaret. You do not offend me. Good night." "Good night to you, my lord." The door closed on her, and he was alone with his own thoughts, which were painful companions. . He had an intense wish to see Gladys, a wish stronger than his anger against her. But all that remained to him of loyalty to a woman who had trusted him to be faithful to her forbade him such double duplicity. The words, "Go, you have honor," were ever in his remembrance. Any interview with his wife, any effort even to seek one, any single word which could even distantly foreshadow the faintest reconciliation with her, were forbidden to hira; he had plainly and forever renounced any possibility of such when he had accepted the conditions on which the woman he loved had again become his. To have accepted them only to break them, to have had the fullness of her faith only to cheat and evade it, as a man can ever do if he wills, would have seemed to him something so foul that he would not have borne his lite under the sense of degradation which such an act of betrayal would have left on him. His honor might "rooted in hishonor stand," but it was at least loyal to the one who had trusted it. Yet a great desire was upon him to see bis wife; the remembrance of her was upon him as he had known her in the early days of Christslea, and that remembrance softened his heart townrd her and outweighed the heavy and bitter memories of their last interview in Naples. The night passed with him again sleeplessly and painfully. The winds were high and swept round the Btately and Bolid house with gusts of fury; the stillness between them was filled with the sound of rushing rains. The day broke, with no rain falling, but with low and heavy clouds. At noon he rode out in its gloom, .and through his woods toward the moors ; rode fast against the watery cold air, over the soaken turf,

and thinking ever as he went of the time he he had ridden thus to seek John Vernon,, on a mere idle caprice which n,in,oltirvii 1 - " ! I

"".'"'"H uuu imagination uau i raiseu into a fancied passion for one fleeting hour. The sky was low, the sea was still, the earth was silent as he went; the dull atmosphere and the melancholy solitude oppressed hira as with some sensation of physical ill. Through the mist which hungeve'rvwhere over the water and the land, tho few distant sails on the sea, the few forms passing on the moors of men or cattle, looked unsubstantial and unreal. To him, whose life was always passed in movement or in pleasure, in the gratification either of the senses or of the intelligence, the winter stillness and loneliness of the country and the shore had a feeling of death in them, His horse, tired with the wet and heavy ground, went slowly, and he did not urge it to more speed; he rode on, lost in- hi3 own thoughts, taking, almost without knowing it, the road to the cottage at Christlea. He had the fullest resolve not to see his wife, nor nliow himself to be seen by her, yet with an unconscious and irresistible impulsion he took his way toward the place where she dwelt, until from the level turf of the cliffs above the house he looked down o:i its thatched roof, it? jeaked gables, its thick environmentof tangled branches. There was not a sound coming f;ou it; a little smoke hung on the vaporous air; a few pigeons Hew low under its eaves; a hollv-tree btood glowing with scarlet berries tall and straight against the sky. To him, come from the vast palaces and marble terraces and sun-bathed gardens of the south, it looked almost like a hovel, with its bumble lowliness and a modest coloring so like the brown earth anil the grav boughs which surrounded it. It hurt his pride to think that that his wife should live there in penury and obscurity. She bore his name, she was the mistress of his bouses, she had a right to , Iiis riches and his possessions of all kinds, and she dwelt hereinlesscomfortand less 6tateiiness than the wife of his steward enjoyed. And all his world knew it, and any one of his friends who chose could come and see the poorness and lowliness of her lot. He dismounted and walked to the edge ot the cliff and let his horse stray as it would, blown and heated, cropping tho short, wet turf to its own hurt. A vague desire to enter the house and ask for her and see her face to face was in him. But he would have been perjur-d and degraded bad he yielded to it. Far away in the golden light of the Neapolitan day was a woman who had said to him: "oi have honor!" He remembered her, and to her at least was faithful. On the table-land of tho cliff near at hand was the little barn-like rustic church of this small sea-parish, and around it were those obscure graves, of which John Vernon's was one, conspicuous amongst the low-lying headstonen by the fair column of white marble she and he bad raised to his memory, with one line graven on it in the language he best loved: Mori est fi-licis aatequam raortefu invocat. He looked at the white pillar looming faintly through the sea-fo. and had he been a woman he could have wept. "J wis fa'seto him, I was false to hrn!" he thought, and his heart ached with the futile pang of regret which cannot reach or atone to the dead. He had too often pardoned to himself bis own transgressions, too often too carelessly excused to himself errors and follies which be thought lightly of because they were welcome and easy ; but the sense of his own disloyalty he could not palliate or smooth away with 60phistry;he deemed it a dishonor and he hated it Eor the first time in all his vears be was guilty in his own sight. Ileliad promised what lie had not fulfilled; he had been untrue to a man who could no more call his actions to account. As he 6tood looking down on the russet roof and the tangled wood in the shadowy misty winter's morning, he eaw the figure of a woman leave the porch and pass under the branches outward tow ard the shore. He could not see her face from his E osition so far above her, but he could see y her figure, bv her bearing, bv her step. that the housekeeper had said truly she was in perfect health and strength. She walked quickly and firmly, the dogs leaping on her and running on before her. She wore the long black cloak of sables in which he had seen her last in Naples. For some minutes he lost her from view under the trees; then she appeared again on the 6trip of 6andy shore, where the waves were roling up with low angrv murmur as though exhausted by the fury of the past night. Then site turned from the sea, and mounted tho cliff path leading to the churchyard. He perceived that she had a basket of evergreens and snowdrops in her hand; she was coming no doubt on her daily errant! of visiting her father's grave. The mist was lighter now, and, though some way oll" her, he saw her plainly, asshe mounted the steep path cut in the granite of the cliff, so familiar to her from her childhood. "What a life! What a life ! " he thought. "What a wretched life if she have no consolations!" A violent impulse moved him to demand from her if there were any; if the gossip of the world was true which traced to Aubrey's influence her choico of this Beclusion; he wished to tell her that ho would be the last to blame her if it were so. and that here, within sight of her father's grave, be w ould ask her pardon and give her his; so at least there might be peace between them. And yet, as he watched her from the distance", crossing the gras of the cliffs with that elastic step w hich he bad so often admired, and which all women had envied her, a more somber, a more ignoble feeling moved him a restless jealousy of past possession, a sense that the dignity of his name was in her hands and that ßhe could play with it as she chose, and that he had lost the right to blame her, whatever she might select to do with it. He watched her pass across the table land toward the graveyard; she did not look toward him; Bhe went straight on to the wicket of the burial place, opened it and passed within; the growth of rosethorn and privet and holly within its low walls of rubble hid her entirely from him. He hesitated a moment; a great, almost an ungovernable wish arose in him to go there and to 6ay to her father's grave all the truths which had been so imperfectly uttered in the haste and bitterness of their last interview. But a thousand miles away ft woman trusted him! To approach his wife, were it even only to say to her an eternal farewell, would be to Ikj a traitor to his pledged word. He had often been the slave of his passions, the fool of his fancy, but he had always been the servant of his honor. One ill is not mended by another he knew; one defalcation is not filled up by another; because he had been untrue to the dead man lying there was no reason or excuse that be should be untrue to tho living woman who loved him. He had voluntarily renounced his right to seek or give explanations from and to

his wife. It was one of those privileges of intimacy which he bad of his own accord consented to abjure forever. He looked once more at the dusk foliage of the church-yard with the slender whit column raising into the gray air, and with a sigh he drew his horse's bridle toward him, and led the beast down the precipitous and broken path which turned away from Christslca. ( To le continued next trccL) OLD-TIME INAUGURAL BALLS.

Sirs. Polk Describes the One In Honor ef Her Husband. Mrs. Polk, the venerable widow of the former president, now eightv-five years oid, was interviewed by a Nashville American reporter recently. She said: "I Pee there is doubt in some quartern whether President-elect Harrison should have an inaugural ball. Well, I should say that Mr. Harrison should go right along and do just as his predecessors havo done. I sjK'ak of the far away pat, though, and it may be that customs cave changed bej'ond my knowledge. I cannot comprehend why or how it is that the question of darning has been raised in connection with Mr. Harrison's inauguration. Now, there was dancing at the ball tendered Mr. Polk, it is truebut nritber Mr. Polk nor myself was expected to dance, and, indeed, while tho president anil his suite were present the dancing ceased. "The inaugural ball of tho period waa designed for the people to have an opportunity of a presentation to the president. The popular hall was Carusi's. A committee d prominent citizens took charge of it, and in order to exclude objectionable persons and prevent too great a crowd, the tickets were sold for SI 0 each. Carusi's was a largo assembly hall.' On this occasion I preceded Mr. Polk with a party of inv friends. As I entered the dancing ceased, and I proceeded to a raised piriform at the head of the room, w here I and my escort awaited the president's arrival, which followed shortly. He was accompanied by a number of gentlemen. They came upon the platform, the musician's playing the president's inarch, and therv he held a general reception. Every oos pr sent who cared to do so came forward to be introduced. The president then promenaded the room a little while, and very 6oon we left the hall and the dancing; was resumed. "I did not care to associate my religious views upon the subject of dancing with & gathering of tho general public, I could see no discredit in it. I did not permit dancing at the white house, it is true, bocause I regarded it as undignified. But a public ball and a bali at the white house, w hatever they may be to-day, were at this period very diff rent affairs," indeed. The inauguration ball was meant for the public, and the president was expected t show himself there during the evening, as it gave many persons who could not "pet near him at the capitol ceremonies an op-, portunity to shake his hand and get a near " view of the new chief magistrate." THE OKLAHOMA TERRITORY. The Status of the Bill Now Pending--Where the Country I Climate, Et. We have recently received several letters from our subscribers making inquiries regard ing the etatus of what is known as the Oklahoma bilk The bill to organize Oklahoma territory has already passed the lower house of congress, and will, doubtless, soon pats tha enate. It has been read twice in the latter body, and is now ia the Lands of the committee on territories. The new i rritory is bounded on the west bv Texas and New Mexico, on the north by Col orado and Kansas on the east by th Cherokee, Seminole and Chickasaw reservations the line of the ninety-sixth meridian and on the south by tha ( reek, Seminole and Chickasaw reservations and the state of Texas. In extent the proposed territory contains about twenty-four million acres. Not all of this land is or will be availaide for occupation, however, by white settlers, as the Osage, Kaw, I'jiwiiee, Sae and Fox, Pottowattomie, J'onca, Tonkawa, Oito and Missouri, Iowa, Kickapoo, Cheyenne and Arapa hoe. Wichita, Kiowa, Comanche and Apach Indians occupy, under reservation pTants from the government, ll,(iv3.0oö acres, or nearly onehalf the entire area. The land which the bill makes available for settlement by anyone who cares to co there will be the Cherokee outlet, for which f",5Hu,(X) is to be paid by the government, and the tract known as No Man's Land, lying between New Mexico and the original Indiaa territory. The bill provides for the purchase of so much of the remaining 12,0iO.0tX) acres owned by the before-mentioned tribes an they can be induced to sell at an acre. The leae under w hich the Cherokee live etock a sorption holds the tract known as the Cherokee Outlet will be extinguished by the pass; of the law, the Cherokee tribe accepting th $7,",0o0 in full payment for its right and title to the land. The soil is said to be rich, with a mild and even climate and well watered. Fro seldom conies, and all kinds of fruits can be prown abundantly. The soil and climate are particularly adapted to the cultivation of corn. 1. S. Since the above was put in type the committee declined to report favorably on the bill. A substitute, it is thoueht, will be prepared authorizing the government to treat with the Indian nations for the extinguishment of their titles to the lands included within the limits of the proposed territory, preparatory to the organization of the territory. TRIPLE MURDER AND SUICIDE. A Drunken Laborer Kills Ills TTife, Two Children and Himself. ASTTLAN'n, Wis., Feb. 20. One of the moil atrocious murders and suicides that has been reported for some time occurred at Upeon, in this county, this morning. A laborer, named Joseph Kropan, killed his wife and two children, aged live and seven years, respectively, and then committed suicide with a dull razor. Hroran drank heav.ly, and this rnorninir had a heated quarrel with his wi'e. She protested because he spent all of his earnings tor drink. The couple quarreled frequently and nothing was thought of it. This morning, when several persons were passing by, the fiend attacked his wife with a razor and nearly severed her head from the body. The little boys awoke from sleep and were both horribly cut by the raving father. He started for the door and cut bis own throat, his body fallinc arainst and barrin? the opening of the door, lie was about thirty-five years of a?e and had no particular busines. When the neiehbors broke in it was a horrible sight. The Mirale room of the honse was literally covered with blood. The bodies of the victims and murderer were still warm, but all were dead. The ail air has thrown the little villatre into an uproar. Brotran has wealthy parents living in the East, who have been telegraphed. A CABLE CAR SMASHED. One lAdy Fatally Injured end Six Othes Persons ltally tlnrt. CniCAOO, Feb. 20. A cable car containioi icores of passengers was struck sqnare io th middle to-night by a locomotive and hurled at least one hundred feeU instantly there was a panic, but, stranie to say, only one person, a woman, was fatally injnreu. Half a dozen people, however, were badly hnrt. The collision occurred at the Sixteenth-tC crossing, oa btate-st. A Chicago t Alton fticinedid the mischief. The griplnan on the cable train mistook for himself a signal to the railroad ensrineer. After the confusion tiad subsided, Mr. Neilschoka was found in the wrecked ctr insensible, and fearfully cat in the side, head and hands, bhe will die. J A MKS BüRNS bad a let; fractured. Miss rtEATRiCE Schaefer, tevcrcly hurt Miss May Pepis, arm dislocated. Three other ladies, Injurie 1cm eerer.