Connecticut western news., 1874-06-12
ented the slightest suspicion of the

nave Sa1Q to people 1nLeroSGoQ that you felt in honor bound to con- tinue teaching until the end of the term. You will know did not intend it to be 50. I meant to stay until substitute could be found, and then take you with me.
 "But now do not come to me, Elsie, until I send for you. Do not aoTite. Send me every other day 8 blank page by mail, the semblance of letter. I will send you the same, so that no heartless eyes or busy tongues may meddle with our"
 Hero a word was erased, but Elsie deciphered it "misery." "Affair had been substituted.
 "Remem Der, if you are tempted to write, shall not read word so writ ten, and I make this resolve in good faith, and for your protection as for mine." .
 No name was signed.
 How would it have been possible to Fred to write "yodr husband after cold, hard, repellent address like this ? But for the erased word Elsie would have torn it into fragments and scat- tered it to the winds. For the sake of "our misery" she kept the cruel scrawl; kept it through all the miserable weeks that followed. when every semblance of letter, following close and following closer," more clearly defined those wretched words.
 The journey required twenty miles by carriage to the railway station
 "F1ed has given special directions" said Elsie, upon whose cheeks burned in two hectic coals the fever of excite ment, "that I should stay at R. over night, and be rested for to-h,or- rows journey. He is to meet me at the train that reaches St. Louis at even- ing." ... .s....
 So far as R. she was attended by friends, and early the next morning, amidst throng of affectionate adieux, started onward alone. She saw no face in the car that she knew. Without, the landscape, dulled by clouds that ere long descended in drizzling rain, had no interest. The old lady, with hun- dred bu ldles, that came in at the next station and bounced upon the unen- gagged seat by Elsie's side, and asked as many questions as she had bundles, succumbed to monosyllables. And Elsie gave herself to reverie. ......-
 She began by taking look at the miniature which she forever wore, and by giving a mental thrust at the bete saoire which contrast-born association of ideas had attached to this miniature of Fred, a thrust of deadly envy at the miracle Desdemona, who saw her lover's "visage in his mind," she pas ed to tho ny ifs of her young life. If we had never been separated, the change would have been gradual, and have given me no shocki If I had only made him know that night it was not him, but that which was not him, that forced me in scch terror to cry outl If I could by dying for it take back that cryi An, Fate's acoustics are so hard, no cries are ever taken back. If l could but krow whether to him, look ing deeper thaa looked, there was not in my earthliness of vision something which masked my soul from his love more effectually than the marring of his dear face masked him from mel If I could but gather from out tfe air, as now I rush to him, one word to say You are forgivenp If-and so on, and so on.
 Day decl'ued the rain ceased the setting sun sent @ glistenlng sheen across the meadow pools {; the cleared atmosphere transmitted upon the in- fuitesimal sparkles sense of hopeful ness and peace. Elsie's reverie glided into sleep.
 She was awakened by what seemed to her piercing shriek.
 Darting a glance along the car, she saw two children. who, entering few stations back in gala dress, had caught her notice saw one of these, the girl, decked in tinsel and tarlatan, wringing her hands with grief; the other, the boy, lifted in mems arms, wounded, and bleeding at the mouth. She looked out from the car window, and saw two men, savagely hurt, staggering beside & ditch, and near them @ sight too dreadful for the light. She heard the piercing shriek that he'd died away re- turn, shattered into innumerable rnoans. A sudden pain made her think to press her hand against her temple; her arm was powerless to obey the impulse. With the effort came 8 sensation of faiptness, followed by inconsistencies complete.
 At whatever time afterward she be- came conscious she found herself in large room, the broad entrance hall of a hotel, lying upon sofa. People, number of prostrate people, on filters, on cots, on foor-spread blankets, were around. Among these prostrates moved an anxious crowd, presently dimmed by an overspreading distance i; and in that distance, clear and perfect, and oh not strange, Fred's face bend ing over her, Fred's voice saying, with an intensity such as nothing gives but the long-pent agony of love wrestling with fate, and treading fate under foot at last,
 "My wifel my darling wife 1" l x
 Two ladies in the rustling silks and clouding lace of visiting costume came down the fiower-vased steps of spa cious house upon the most famous ave- nue of the West. They entered the carriage that awaited them, and drove in silence many blocks.
 At last, and with sigh, the younger lady said, "You had hardly prepared me for such a wonderful interior"
 "It Ss a wonder," said the elder, with an accent of real enjoyment; "so ex' ceedingly rich in details, yet with such quiet unity as Q whole The arrange ment of the series of drawing-rooms opening upon a central one Is some- thing new with us."
 "And significant in this case," sug- gested her friend, in tone like pity.
 "Yes and the draperies, especially those portieres in three shades of vel vet and the management of light is a study, at evening as we'll as by day. You should be here, my dear, at one of their exquisite musicales. The objects of art, too l-that one picture by Church is enough in itself to naenaorise house. Then the marbles the rare flowers those great arches of Australian ferns. how can they be kept growing sol And the bronzes was perfectly carried