Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-12-03

tie Champion. She had been TO the
city TO give a music lesson; he was
coming home TO look after some prop
erty that had fallen TO him in Little
Champion. Though they we're but five
miles from the station, yet the storm
was 80 cold and binding that only
few undertook TO walk into town.
There was but handful of passengers
altogether, Little Champion people
mostly, who did business in the city and
returned at night; and so it happened
that Rose was the only woman among
them. They spent the night out there
among the the drifts, there being, for
tnnately, plenty of wood on board the
train to keep them comfortable; and
under such circumstances people make
acquaintance with comparative ease.
Mr.. Throckmorton, not wishing to
travel on foot in the storm, and rather
enjoying the novelty of the situation,
had yet ventured out q mile or so, and
foraged at a farmhouse, returning with
a supply of dainties which he begged
Rose to share. He had observed that
she was bored, sleepy and miserable; he
sympathized with her as a man invaris-
bly, does with pretty woman. Why is
1t that beauty in distress is more appeal
ing than uglinessP Though for the mat
ter of that, perhaps Mr.. Theodore
Throckmorton would have folded his
wrap for her weary head, have braved
the storm for her refreshment, and be-
guiled her tedium with anecdotes and
| nonsense, all the same, had she been
the plainest old maid in Little Cramp-
ton; but then his conduct would have
proved an exception to that of his sex,
no doubt. By daylight Rose and Theo-
dore were as intimate as If they had
been born neighbors; and an acquaint-
ance begun thus, in a snow-drift, had
drifted into a more tender relation. In
| spite of Aunt Jane, Rose and Theodore
were married, and set off in the early
winter for his Southern home; and what
a new world it was that Rose had dis
coveredl She used to wonder, during
those days, If it were really herself, poor
little overlooked Rose Thornton, who
had a right to all this splendor, to
all this love and devotion; If she should
not wake up to find herself in her diHgy
little room at Little Champion, in her
black delaine, trying to make dime do
duty for a dollar, with nobody kinder
than Aunt Jane to look to, with all this
happiness only a dissolving dream.
/ ''My life is like a poem," she said, al
most daily.
al hope it will never become plain
prose-" Theodore would answer.
Mr.. Throckmorton was called away
on business affairs for a week or so,
when they had been married little
more than a year, and at first it seemed
to Rose as if the sun had gone under
cloud. She tried to occupy herself with
thousand tr1fles; the very roses in the
garden appeared to hang their heads
and drop their petals pensively; the
mocking-birds sang out of tune; the at
mosphere was oppressive as before a
thunderstorm. Rose wandered about
the house and grounds aimlessly, not
knowing how to pass the time without
Theodore. She reminded herself of the
ghost of Mrs. Tristram Throckmorton
haunting the corridors with her lighted
taper to look at her husbands portrait
she turned over the rare prints in the
library; she opened the old-fashioned
novels, written for dead and gone
generation; she drew a melancholy
strain or two from Theodore's violin,
like the wailing of a banshee. One aft
ernoon she bethought herself of Theo-
dore's diary of the war, which she had
promised she should read whenever she
wanted to descend to plain prose. "Itis
hiddenin a drawer of my private desk"
he had said. "Read it, Rosamundi,
when you wish to be bored within an
inch of your life." She opened the desk
and began her search; but the diary
was not so easily found. A friend had
borrowed it, not long before, in order to
fix the date of some political events in
his mind. But while she turned over
his papers and opened the drawers, her
fingers must have touched accidentally
the spring of secret compartment,
which, flying open, disclosed the picture
of woman in q case bedded with
pearls and emeralds-a woman with
great velvety eyes like panther's, a
rich color on the swarthy cheek, and a
tense expression about the scarlet
curve of the lips; face to haunt
and perplex one. Rose shuddered before
this appariton. "Death is in her beau
tiful eyes," she cried. Chow she must
have hated to die, and leave this pleas
ant world-and Theodorel How did
he ever forget her and love mel" And
then her eyes fell upon shabby little
diary pushed out of sight beneath the
picture. "This must be Theodore's," ,"
she thought; and she seated herself in
a Sleepy Hollow chair to enjoy it, yet
feeling as if that face would always
come between herself and Theodore,
unless she could lose herself in these
pages and forget it. In fact, so pene-
trated was she with thoughts of this
beautiful dead woman, whom Theodore
had once loved, that she had been read
ing the diary for an hour or so, had
turned the leaves, and had tried me-
chahically to follow the thread, before
she awoke to the conviction that it was
not novel she held, nor q record of
the war, that it was not written in Theo-
dore's hand, but that it IOGS a record of
intense feeling and agony-the diary of
Julia Throckmorton. .f|i.t1.
"20th.-And this is revenge, indeedl
You starve both body and soul, Theo-
dore Throckmorton-you who promised
to love and cherish. Was 1 TO blame
because could not love youP Was it
my fault that you could not prove your
self as irresistible as RaphaelP Why
did marry you, thenP When they
swore to me that Raphael was dead,
shot through the heart, what did any