The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1869-07-20 00:00:00

LOVE TURNED TO MR&

The night was far advanced, and Marston slept
soundly, happily unconacious of all the trairdy in the
wakeful fats., bent over his.

She h.od watched him thus for some hours ; he had
drawn her bead to his shoulder, and bade her lie there,
but soon as he slept she set up again, feeling as if she
were suffocated by his touch. The blank dulness of bee
pain ism paioing away. She no longer stared at his face
•ithout ',leaning. She no longer coked herself "I. it
so!" In those dark hours thn doubt Mod strengthened
into to rrible thetinewees. tilie looked ethic hand still
w trio with the clasp of her own, at his lip, which had
lately sought hors with a *loopy goody gand•night rim ;
I. hnr boort she nitwit...it the treachery of his carcases
and loathed the cheot be put on her.
" You are false—folso—false," she said. "Your fne
Is bsteful to me."

Ile turned his head into the line of & mlonbeare,
thet strearne I heroics his pillow, and • wild thought
came into her mind.

"Supposing that moonbeam could kill you. Suppos-
ing that you were to die to-night, that you could not
move. attain. Suppose, Thurston, that I were to make
you so thit she could never hear your footstep, or blush
at your voice or return your kisses excepting in memory.
I should gru:lge her the inernm7, though, and should
have to kill her BO that she might not think of you."
How handsome 12. looked., he slumbered thus—the
moonlight shining on h'• °lose curled head, round
throat, and noble outline of chest. The somewhat
stern chsraeter of his beauty softened by the Wheal:
helplessness of sleep.
" lie was not meant to die yet." she mused, as she
leaned her chin on her hand and watched him with
white (axe and horning eyes.
Flo wax not nieant to die yet, she thought, not until
he had worn out all that seri ngth, until his full voice
wan cracked and thin, hie bright eyes dull, and his firm
'twee feeble; but if he died now he would tell no nine.
wuula die in the bloom of manhood, in her arms,
here wool I be the last kiss he felt—he shout LI never
ris:from that bed to meet another woman's welcome!
. .

The dark thought was tending out clear in her mind
new; that which I.er heart Vreboded when she beard
li. circle.' laugh by the fireplace do•nntairs, wee now
fashioned into • determination.

" He must die, he must die," she repeated to her.elf,
and the clock chimed on the stairs, and the branch that
boat again.it the erindow•pane, seemed to eal.o her
words. She started when she heard • faint chirrup and
stir in the elm-tree outside. "It will soon be morning,"
she thought. She unclasped hie hand gently (rots her
arm. and laid it by his side; then she slid away from
the bed, and felt her way to the pistel-aus that stood
on the drawers near Mowbray's head.
"I always said it was dangerous, keeping loaded
pistols in the room, but Thurstan liked to have mune
protection In this lonely old house—he did not think
who would use them againet him—but then he shoull
not have murdered me Bret"
. _

She stole bsok noislesaly,—her delicate little hand over-
borne by the weight of the deadly instrument it carried,
sad then she crept into bed and looked again at the
sleeper.
'Why should he not die"

_
This man bad been the only human thing she bad
ever cherished. No mother's hand bad ever blessed
her head, no sister had laughed and wept by her side
during youth's April season of blithe joy and impulsive
sorrow. But she did not feel that the bad missed any.
thing teem her life after she knew Thurstan Mowbray.
She reverenced hie slightest word; her vivid sympa-
thies bad made his wishes her own. 81th lowered her
flue intellect by striving to bring it to the level of bis
narrow capsbilities. She oared not tor heights he could
ascend. She took no pleasure In perceiving • poetical
when he could only see the practical aspects.
So far from feeling discoinfortat being misunderstood,
it was the constant endeavour of her heart to restrain
the pouring, of • mind that was apt to range above the
scope of her lover's mental viirion;

Some women hod loved Thurston Mowbray for the
benefits thvy had resped at his hoods; others bad fed
his vaulty with ephemeral devotiou, born of lugs end
idleness ; many hod given him love-tokens worth gold
awl silver ; but this woman bad trampled down her
mind at his feet, and every faculty of her being rejoieed
in the sacrifice—if sacrifice it could be called ; for her
whole heart gloried in its consummation. Re... all
. . . . .

in all to her; h 0 prized even her beauty only because
itlpleased him ; she exulted in life only when the day
was brightened by his preeenco. See would not have
eared if all the hours of his abeenee had been struck
out of her total of existence ; without him her heart
ached with heaviness; with him she wan as a bird mad
with joy because epring has come.
All the divine fervour with which a southern wor-
shipper lays her beet and purest thoughts at the feet of
' some imaged deity ; all the intense half-savage tender-
ness with which a wild animal cherishes its young. this
desolate woman had lavished on him who was the one
life of her lite, the alpha and omega of her existence.
And now she was 'retaking him there, while the dark
hours slipped into grey, and asked her heart why
her hand should not murder all the beautiful
part of her life, since it had been turned into treachery,
foulness, and falsehood. Why should those dark eyes
open again to look a lie into her ow,? Why should
he ever know light or speech sgain, sinew he had made
light loathsome and sound intoleiable to her ?
Between his face and hen kept rising the glitter of
two sentences. See could even 1410 the shape of the
letters, and recognise his handwriting; but they
quivered perpetually, so that they made her eyes ache.
So she hid her face in her hands, and, when she next
looked up, they were gone • but she heard them ringing
In her ears, "I never loved but you:" "to-morrow
shall hire . . .

" To-roor;ow I-shall kiss you again." Azalea repeated,
vaguely; then she touched his lips with • sort of tender
pity. " No. they will never kiss living thing again;
they will be too cold and stiff; hut I shall kisa them,
for than they will not be able to stab we with lice, to
dishonour me by Inconstancy."
The clock struck four. She looked hurrloily round.
" Supposing he were to wake," she thought; "he
twilit not let ow do it."

She put her hand on tho trigger of the pistol, and
lifted it ton level with his breast. She leant over bin.
no that her hair fell in shadowy profusion over the
waren henving bosom It aluirwt touched.

He had dt7eeived and injured Let-r-; but her large
heart would have pardoned him that wrong. He might
have withered her body with physical torture, and she
would have kiwed him, smiling the while ; he had
cramped her mind, and Ole had hugged the mental
fetters, judging them to be sweet.r tnan crowns of
honour; but against this injury the whose of her
powiete•te nature rebelled ; in proportion to the great
nose of her love warn the n.ightinesa of its wreck.
When her thoughts rut collected themselves from
the miserable chaos of confusion and despair in which
the docovery of his falsehood had plunged them, she
had prayed, "Lt me die."
But afterwards, when she again felt the magic of his
touch, the ear .so of hot lips, a Berm thrill of jealousy
kindled her dull anguish into fury.
"Rather than have you touch her, rather than be
left here alone to brood over her love passages with my
other self, I would pass eternity in tormeet."
She never moved her eyes from his face when she put
her hand down on that cold little toy of ill" which
was to turn sleep into death.
Her pale lips never quivered ; the madness of much
thought, the rack of intolerable suffering, had blighted
all softer signs of emotion from her face. The tense.
nese of her agony found expression but in one idea,—
lie shall die!"
Ile lay there a model of manly strength and human
beauty. helpless in his unconeciousneae ass feeble infant.
She aderolted her hold on the pistol, and put the other
arm about his neck. She thought she would kiss him
and pull the trigger at the same moment. She would
have the last embrace of his living lips.
. . .

--She slid her fingers round hi• rhrOat., and (Thurston
Mowbray never knew bow near he was to solving the
gre.tt reeau.Otre in the grey dawn of thia June morning)
disturbed by the the movement, or stirred by some
vagrant dream, be turned toward, her with • smile. and
putting out his arm, drew her hand and the deadly
Instrument it held, over his bosom ; then drooping his
head on her breast, he relapsed again into deep
alamber.
Bho stared at him with wild eyes while he gathered
her in his arms. She felt her hand and that which it
held sliding over the beating pulses of his beast fibs
raiwid herself and looked first at and then with a
deep-drawn breath ehs bowed her face on his hand&
and envered them with kisses, sod her slender form
won shaken by husky passionote sob. and tears. The
unnatural strain had given way ; the fierce jealousy,
the murderous resolve, all melted into a murmurous
sound of caroming words, • rush of bitter tears.
"Oh my love, my love; how can I help loving you?
Can I tear my heart from my body? Onn I blot out all
the days and hours when I lived, and when you were
my life; for it is I that am dead. lam dead, Thurston,
and you have killed me."
She removed the pistol gently from its proximity, so
Perilous to the sleeper, and replaced it in the ewe.
Then she knelt down and tried to pray; to give thanks
to Heaven for having preserved her from the commis-
sins of a great em n with its inheritance of bitter remorse;
but in her heart she knew that it was not an inspira-
tion of repentance, bat her lover's unwitting caress that
had bald her hand from him destruction, and she did not
dare to lift up her face to God, but after murmuring a
mechanical formula of prayer, she rose and ono% more
bent over her lover's head.
"I will never we you wake, not that I would bort
you," she added with • shudder, at the memory of
what her thought+ had been helf.an-hour sine.; "bat
because I could not bear to see your face, or to meat
your eyes -the old henry might ooms back, and then
you would not be ads from me."
Then her pale face. reasion•warped and etained with
tears, hovered an Instant above the sleeping man, and
her lips closed on Lis in the last kiss she was ever to
give human creature.
How mood of despair, how little of sweetness lived
in that ogress, thosewho have known the sore trouble
of • broken heart can best tell.
Later in the morning, when Thurston awoke there
was no Azalea to attend him i at his morning meal—
From "So Runs the World Away." in Once a Week.

SHOCKING lIUTRAGN NUR lIIIKFFIKLD.—From the
siiiintoeneement of the dispute at the Tinsley Park and
Manor Pita, hear Sheffield (the property of Benjamin
ilnotsman, Esq.), disturbances have been frequent
between the unionists and non-unionists. Early on
Saturday evening shots wens heard, but little notice
Was taken. as since the strike it bee been the custom of
thu non•unionistr to prectise with firearms, no aa to be
ready to tepel any attack that might be wade upon
them by those whom they bad supplanted at the pits.
At eleven o'clock at night a man named Davis, a
" knolwtick," employed as an engineer st the ?tenor
Pit, WAR drinking at one of the puhlic•honnes in the
ovigliboorhood, and on coming out he met iiWOaain
11•111e4 gyasa, laho hail made herself obnoxious by ring-
ing tin kettles and other things in the faces of the non-
o Monists. Davis saeau lied her, and on her husband opining
totheresonethe fellow ran to his own house and brought
oat fl p.ietel, with which he deliberately shot the
woman M the abdomen, inflicting a wound which is
alimat certain to prove fatal. Thereupon • general
skirmish ensued. Knobstiolis and unionists turned oat
iii Isnre force, the former severally armed with weapons
of various kinds. In the rules three men were abo
and several °there ',merely wounded on the head an
othar parts of the body with staves and batons. The
disturbance tented about to hours before it could be
nut a ,lop to by the police, who eventually suoreeded
rit capturing several ol the ringleaders.