Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1899 — Worth the Winning. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Worth the Winning.

By The Duchess.

» CHAPTER XlV.—(Continued.) f “SepM you were spying on me!” cries little gasps. ‘‘What brought you, Bit? That door below was locked —has ■me locked for fifty years. Is there a BKeepiracy against me, then, that you Hgn thus force yourself into my presence, Rjyspite of bolts and bars?” * "The lock gave way,” stammers Vera; Mlt must have been old, broken by age, pFoety. I bad nothing to do. It was by rape merest chance I came here. I am jporry. sorry.” Her voice dies in her | throat. i "I don’t believe it; there is more that ||>oa keep behind. Speak, girl; speak, I ; Command you! Who showed you the jr*fay here?” have told you,” says Vera, tremuploosly; “you must believe me. If I bad Ijtnown I should not have come. I—l am gprry I have so frightened you, but ” |; : «Who says I am frightened?” lie turns ittpoa her with a bitter scowl and a piercMlng (lance. “Why should I care about Peeing disturbed when I was merely idling I away a dull hour by looking through my •wn will?” "Yours?” asks Vera, innocently enough. • “Ay, whose else?” be asks, with a snarl Of anger. “What do you mean, iflrl? Do you doubt my word? Whose ■ alae should it be —eh, eh ? Go, leave me,” Icries he, furiously; “and cursed be the Splay you ever saw my bouse!” He waves to her to leave him, and, more annerved than she has ever been la all her life before, she retreats behind the heavy curtain and runs with all her might down the dark corridor without, down the steep stairway, and so out into the passage into the hall. CHAPTER XV. Going to where Tom Peyton is dili- . gently weeding, Griselda takes him to task. “Why didn’t you tell me your sister j WM the sweetest woman on earth?” demands she, in quite an aggrieved tone. f "Because she isn't,” says Tom, striving with a giant dock that has treacherously concealed itself beneath the spreading leaves of a magnificent dahlia; “you are that.” "Nonsense!” says Griselda; and then, ; “Oh, Tom! what do you think she is going to do—at once? She is going to make an effort to induce Uncle Gregory to let Vera and me stay with her at The ' Friars! Only fancy if she succeeds! Wasn’t it perfectly lovely of her to think of It?” “Oh, she isn’t bad,” says her brother, broadly; “hut may I ask how she. pro--1 poses tackling the old gentleman?” “Through Seaton.” “If Seaton helps her ” | The words die on bis lips, his jubilant air forsakes him —having turned a corner of the secluded pathway they had Ipbosen, they run right into the arms of Beaton Dysart! For a moment the two ; men gase blankly into each other’s eyes. | "What la the meaning of this mnsquetade?” demands Dysart presently with an angry frown; “what brings you here, Peyton, In that dress, and with my cousin?” “You certainly have every right to aak,” says Peyton, with a rueful glance at his damnatory clothing, “but surely r might guess the answer. The fact I’m —in love!” He makes this confession with a careful artlessnesa not to be anrpassed. - “In love?” exclaims Dysart, frowning etill more darkly. : "Quite ao,” amiably; “five fathoms 4eep. And your father being so—so—exclusive,” making a hard fight for a civil word, “I couldn’t manage to see her in l any orthodox fashion, so I took service ; here." 4 "Her? whom?” asks Dysart, changing color. A sudden light flashes into his ; eyes; to him, as to Tom Peyton, there is but one “her” in the world. "Why, Griselda,” says the letter, as if at the other’s stupidity. ? "And what do you suppose will be the Upshot of all this?” sternly, v. “That, my dear fellow, is what I have never yet gone into. But marriage, I hope.” "Pshaw!” says Dysart, impatiently; | “end what of Griselda?" | “Griselda has confessed that she—likes | »»e a little. I say, Dysart,” with a sudden change of toue, "you won’t tell your ;;«nd—eh?” v H “I am much more likely to tell your slater,” says Seaton, angrily. “You needn’t. She knows. She was here just now, and is full of a desire to kidnap Griselda and carry her away to The Friars. I say, Dysart, my sister depends upon you to make your governor give his consent to the girls going on a gpWt to her; you won’t disappoint her, H&t’do what I can,” gravely; "hut I shouldn’t advise you to be too sanguine |«a to the result of my interference.” Ipfetae to his word, Seaton managed, as- , ter a hard tight, to secure his father’s |*paaent that Vera and Griselda might * two weeks’ visit to Lady Rivers- . It la quite five o’clock when they arrive and enter the spacious hall of The Hplara, that now is filled with a delicate, pMnber light A crimson stream from a \ painted window, somewhere in the distance, casts a flood of glory, blood-red, at Mppt's feet, and a comfortable tinkling •f spoons clinking against'china smites I At the top of the room, reclining in a ppither listless fashion on some velvet IfWMon*. are two little girls, quite lovely A&ough to arrest the gase of any casual pßtoerfer. They have given in to the cu||»ilty attendant on the entrance of the ||*aw guests, and fix their large wide eyes BW Vera, who, in tura, looks back on MMM with a certain interest. Lady Rlversdaie, by a word—an intensely proud, fond word—had intimated ffcat they wore her children. The young*r. taking her courage in both hands, Mm her little slim fingers under the Ills. . iJL /-.ai. ...i..

narrow gold bangles that adorn Vera's wrist, and begins to push them up and down with a childish, diffident gesture. “What’s your name?” asks she, gravely. “Vera.” “Vera!” Both children repeat the word with a sort of gratification. “But —tell us—you have another name, haven’t you?” “Dysart,” confesses she, softly. “Why, that’s Seaton’s name,” cries Dolly, brightening, and looking up at the tall young man who is standing near them; “isn’t it, Seaton? Why, you must be something to him. Sister —eh?” “No,” says Vera, shaking her head. “You can’t be his mother?" hazards the younger child, uncertainly. Vera laugrs lightly. “No,” she says again. “I have it! I know it!” exclaims Dolly the wise, glancing up triumphantly; “you are—his wife!’’ This innocent bombshell spreads dismay in the camp. “Who is that pretty little girl over there?” Vera asks, with a wild longing to change this embarrassing conversation, pointing to where the girl who had first attracted her Is sitting, “quite opposite, in the red-and-white gown? Do you see her?” “Oh! that is Mary Butler. Don’t you know her? Everybody knows Mary Butler. We love her, so does everybody else.” “Mamma says Seaton does,” says little Flossy, mildly; “perhaps that’s why he won’t marry you.” “It was true, then,” thinks Vera. A great sense of disgust rises up within her, swallowing all other thoughts. And yet he would have forsworn himself! Would have—nay, he would do so still. Oh, the shamelessness of it! Perhaps something of her secret scorn communicates itself to him, because even in the midst of his apparently engrossing conversation he lifts his head abruptly and his eyes seek hers, and read them as though he would read her soul. And then a curious light flashes into his face. He makes a movement, quick ungoverned, as though he would rise and go to her, but, even as he does so, someone steps out from the shadows behind her, and, bending over her, holds out his hand—a young man, tall, well favored, smiling, with a air about him of sudden, warm delight. “You remember me?” he says, so distinctly that Seaton can hear him across the room. “To think that I should have the happiness of meeting you—here—today—and after so many vain inquiries. How it brings back the past to see you. Venice, Rome, thnt last carnival. Vera, say you are glad to see me!” Some people walking past them, and suddenly staudiug still, obliterate them from Seaton’s view, hut when next he looks the stranger is sitting beside her, and Vera, with flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes, full of an unmistakable welcome, is murmuring to him in low, soft tones. “Who is the man talking to my cousin?” asks Seaton, indicating Vera’s companion by a slight gesture, and speaking in a tone so changed that Miss Butler involuntarily lifts her head to look at him. “Lord Shelton,” she says. “George Sandes he was. Don’t you know him? Great hunting man. He came in for the title about eight months ago. Thnt brought him back from his big game in the East.” CHAPTER XVI. In the last four days Peyton has mysteriously disappeared, no one knows whither, except perhaps Griselda, his sister aud two others. “North” he was going, be said to inquiring friends. To-day, however, he has turned up again, admirably dressed as ever, and ns radiant as a good conscience should make any man. “I'm so glad Tom has got back in time,” says Griselda. “I quite feared Uncle Gregory would he too many for him. Vera, what makes you look like that, darling? Now tell me what it is that has annoyed you.” “1 must be mad to be annoyed,” saya Vera, with angry self-contempt “Seaton again?” “It is always Seaton,” with an increase of her irritation, “when it isn’t his father. Was there no other path into which fate could have flung me, except this? Yes, it Is Seaton.” “But why think so much about him? He cannot interfere with you now, be his father never so persistent in his idea of marrying you to him, because all the world can see he is as good as engaged to Miss Butler.” “1 pity her, then, with all my soul! What a family to enter! She is too good to be sacrificed so cruelly. I believe he is employed by his father to watch me, to report all that I say or— Ah!” she breaks off abruptly, and points almost triumphantly to the pathway outside, where indeed Seaton atanda. That it is one of the most public walks at The Friars, that Seaton might have, nay, indeed has, come this way withont intention of any kind she does not allow herself to believe. “I told you,” she says, vehemently, “it is to spy upon my every action he is here! Oh, fool that I was, to dream of being free for even these few days!” She has come a step or two forward; a scarlet tide of indignant humiliation baa dyed her cheeks. She still points toward Seaton with one trembling hand, while he, advancing slowly, looks with some anxiety from her to Griselda, who !a sorely troubled, as if to demand an explanation. “I think you must be mistaken, darling,” she says, nervously, laying her hand upon her sister’s arm. “1 fed sore Seaton would not undertake the part yon hare assigned him. Seaton, speak to her; tell her it Is impossible that you should do this thing.” * "What thing} Of what dote oho seen*® mol" Us brow growing dark.

into her head that yon an her* to—to watch her." "Is that how it strikes you?" sayS bo, slowly; a sudden, short, miserable laugh breaks from him. “So that la bow yon look at it? Great heaven, to think how I have loved you—such as yoo—no poor a thing! It shames me now to think of it!” He draws his breath sharply, though she writhe*. "No, you shall hear me!. I have heard much from you, first and last—this shall be the last, I swear! Here, even now, in this moment when I find you so altogether contemptible a creature, it is my misery to know thnt I still love you! Day after day you have heaped insults upon me. Your every look has been an affront. I have said too much,” he continues, wearily; but with a little eloquent gesture die renders him silent. “Ob, not T too much, but perhaps enough”—she smiles again, that cruel smile that hurts him like the sharpest stab—“surely it would be hard to expect you to find another insult to-day. Tomorrow, perhaps. And now let me say one little word. Have I no cause to doubt you?” "None, none!” declares he, vehemently. She throws out her hands with a little expressive movement. “I leave that to your own conscience, to your own sense of right and wrong,” she saya, shrugging her shroulders, finely. "But once for all,” raising her voice and throwing up her head, “I warn you. Rather than marry you,” making a slight gesture of horror, “I would accept the first man that asked me!” A faint rustle among the bushes outside, a footstep—and Lord Shelton steps into view. “I hold you to your word,” cries he, gayly; he steps lightly within the flowercrowned archway, and looks straight at Vera. He is smiling, but underneath the smile lies a longing to be taken seriously. “You give me a chance," he says; “I here, before witnesses, declare myself a suitor for your hand”—his expression is still wavering betwixt mirth and gravity, and he holds out to her both his hands. “You are not, however, the first to ask, her,” says Dysart, in a voice vibrating with many and deep emotions. His brow Is black, and anger fights for mastery with despair in his dark eye. Vera, pale as death, but with a little indignant frown, steps between the two men. “What does it all mean?” she asks, ; contemptuously; “would you make a tra- * gedy out of a farce? It so, at least be good enough to assign me no part in it.” She sweeps both men out of her path i by a slight imperious gesture, and pass- ; ing them, walks swiftly sway in the direction of the house. (To be continued.)