Litchfield enquirer., 1878-05-02

her an income Sufnc1ent to marry LennOX up
 on; every plan she made tended to that end,
 and though her intercourse with all the fellows
 who had been about her before he came was
 just as frank and friendly as of old, there
 wasn't touch of filtration ill it, that every
 one of them would swear.
 1.-The Coningsbys had dmoved to quite anoth-
 CT part of London from where LennoX's rela-
 tions lived, and 80 she heard nothing at all
 about him, either directly or indirectly, but
 she never lost her faith in his intentionto come
 back for her at the end of two or three years.
 She knew he could fndher easily enough when
 he did come back, and so she worked on in
 full reliance, neverdoubting him any more than
 she deemed it possible he should doubt her. d .'' She had left girl friend behind her, who
 knew of the understanding that had existed kbetween Lennox and Kate, and laughed at it
 in a cynical way--not ill-naturedly at all,
 but because she had a fixed idea that Kate
 had heart for every man who was present,
 and not so much as an affectionate memory of
 the absent one. This girl had said this so of-
 ten openly to Kate and other people, that she
 got the idea firmly fixed in her own mind, and
 in the mind of one or two others; and she car
 ried her conviction so far as to earnestly urge
 a friend of her own to try his fate with Kate
 whom he very much admired. This man was
 in every respect unsuited to her. He was
 schOlar-a savant, in fact-and his reputation
 for learning was grand one. But he was
 foreigner, and full of prejudices against the
 habits and people to which and whom Kate
 had been accustomed all her life. He fell in
 love with her, in fact, for her vivacity, and
 her power, and love of pleasing, and then he tried to knock it all out of her, because it fought with his recollections of the demeanor
 of the daughters of his own land. But Kate
 bore good deal from him, in friendship, at
 first, on account of that love she always has for talent, and her womanly weakness for success. So somehow it came about that their names were coupled together, not mali | ciously at all, but as matter of course; ; and
 as they were in the same set, and his devotion to her was palpable thing, it got taken for granted that they were engaged, and some people pitited the grave man of learning good deal for having suffered his choice to fall on so notorious f1irt as Kate Coningsby. l ''That she was f1attered by her conquest over a mind that was infinitely more powerful than her own is ptiable truth, and she made what even l must admit to be culpable pre- tense of rejoicing in the fact of having him in her thrall. She told him about Lennox, and glored openly enough in her love for him, and his love for her; so that the other man went
 into the snare with his eyes open, even those who blame her must confess.
 ''The awful crash came soon. As I've said, she had never heard anything about Lenno2 all this while. One day she went to see the young lady who had been the medium ot bringing about the latest folly with the foreign CT, and after few remarks on indifferent sub jects this girl said to Kate
 "'Have you heard-but of course you have that Captain Lennox has destroyed him self?'
 ''It is useless trying to describe what Kate did, or thought, or felt, when this blow was dealt at her. Though the announcement was made to herinsuch an apparently heartless and horribly commonplace way, she knew that it was true, and that it was net meant unkindly. Her friend believed that Kate would have no special feeling in the matter, and acted accord ] ing to her belief. And no one ever knew what l kaIe' $ feelings were, for she never spoke Of them. 4 long agoAizlng illness followed and when she came out of it her youth, and bright 4lsoar cad zesssar s7Ea. 9isS sipc dellx- ] cd that the illness was a fever and that she had caught it from some one else, and no one could gansay her.
 ''Her courage was gone, and now she needed i It more than ever, for cruel reports were not scarce about the affair, and people who knew nothing at all of the matter coniectured freely aboutit It got bruited about that poor LennOx had heard all manner of rumors about the girl he meant to have made his wife, and that he cut his throat rather than come home to find himself cheated. Kate went through tortures | of humiliation and grief, but she hadn't the | she had nothing to be remorseful about. But | the whisperings stung her to death nearly, and | she grew nervously sensitive about being treat ed as one on whose hands there was a stain | of blood
 ''The truth came out at last, and cleared her; l but it couldn't do away with the pain, and shame, and sorrow which had been her portion. Something had gone wrong in the regiment l about money matters and Lennex who was as | hOnOrahle and nrOud Q folloIu ovor hroafhpd couldn't stand the shadow of suspicion that had been cast upon him. It was money, not l woman, that drove him to that doom but if he had known how that poor girl was made to bite the dust in consequence of his rash act, he would have lived and faced everything, l be- lieve, rather than have left her such ghastly legacy.
 Its no use pretending that she didn't dete- riorate from that time-she did, sadly enough. With her heart bleeding still for the man she had really loved, she pledged her hand to the l brilliant scholar who deserved something in- 1 finitely higher than Kate had come to be now. l But she was so>sore and wounded, so tempest a tossed and shattered, that she could not resist l the opportunity of fanchOring in any harbor that l offered. But it was wretched day for her when | Gollinger declared his love for her, and on my soul believe it was far more wretched day | for him.
 ''He was man with chivalrous ideas about mans honor and woman's purity and that very manner of Kate's which had captivated him be- | came scourge to his back as soon as he re- | garded her as his own property. According to his idea the fit and proper wife for an honest man was the girl who had never thought of 1 love, much less learned it's meaning until the honest man bade her belong to him. It was a grievous thing in his eyes that Kate should have l loved and been loved before she ever saw him. I It was even more grievOuS thing that she ! would not ignore having done so. '.He was good man and he was was great man ; he had made himself familiar with all | languages and studied all creeds-but he knew l nothing of women. Kate could not, or at least she did not, resist the fascination of Gollingers name and fame. For the man himself she had no love, and the bondage grew intolerable to | her. Yet she shrank from the thought of giv- l ing him up, with shrinking that only a wo- 1 man whose love-ventures had all failed as hers l had can at all understand. She grew afraid of i him. for under the guse of a suave and gentle manner he had an intolerant spirit and diff l cult temper. He wanted the girl he had chos- en for her imperfectiens apparently, to cast | them like an old skin, and to develop new and 1 unnatural perfections that belong to quite an- l other order of womankind, under his auspices 1 She could far better have stood a downright l good rowing from fellow who would have l called spade spade, as an Irishman would 1 have done, than she could stand the transcend ental twaddle he talked to her. He made out to the girl you see, that, though he knew bet ter, the rest of the world would deem her puri- | ty sullied if she so much as got spoken about. And it's always been Kate's fate to be spoken about. She goaded him into jealousy by show ing delight in other peoples society when she 1 felt it. And he hadn't the manliness to ca Il it 1 jealously,' but just worried her by declaring that it was all for her sake, and without any consideration for himself, that he spoke.
 ''He was not d-looking fellow, nor was he sufficiently plain for his ugliness to be inter- esting. Therefore, when he jeered at the wom- anly weakness which made her see more merits than were there in handsome men, and gibed at every man as being brainless who happened to have personal beauty--when he did these things in dulcet tones, Kate saw the litteness of it all and wasn't the more closely bound to him for 1 the sight.