The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1881-08-10


had only given momentary rein to her
thoughts, enough to make her lay down
her sewing and lean her head against
the window, and wish she might never
have known the sweetness of Laurie
Marcellus love.
Until the unusual whirring OF the
sewing machine wheel made her aware
! that Margaret had observed her and was
.displeased. So, with little, desperate
! effort, she forced herself back to the
basting of the satin fold in her work.
+" 1 was thinking about that auction
sale at Dempsey's tonight" Margaret
said, almost Grossly. "You want q
desk, you said, and Maggie Rich says
there's very good one to be sold there.
I'll go and bid on it for you, 1 think, if
ever under the sun get these bands
stitched on It seems to me that those
Rich girls are not happy unless their
dresses are absolutely loaded with trim
ming"
Grace looked up, with such sweet,
sweet eyes-it was no wonder handsome
Marcellus had liked to look into the
pure brown wells of limpid light.
"You are so good, Margaret do
afford it,"
"You needn't say if 1 can afford it,
Grace. You have as much right to the
money as / have. I'm going to buy
myself cashmere polonaise-you can
have the desk il it is reasonable in
price,"
So that was how Miss Warrener came
to be at the auction sale at the big
house on the hill that evening-Demp-
sey's grand mansion, whose prince had
taken a whim to sell out and spend
few years abroad.
And the next day the desk was deliv-
cred at the cottage in Appledore row,
and Grace put it in her room-a small,
beautiful article, standing nicely in a
coy corner, and just the very thing for.
Grace's few books and her stationery.
1t was very handsome, and Grace
cried little over it, because it brought
back so many thoughts of the dear old
lays when she was surrounded by Just
such elegancies of furniture, and when
everything seemed, somehow, to lead
70 that one pivotal thought-when Lau-
rie Marcellus had been her friend.
So the months went On, and the two
growing sweeter and paler, and more
patlently thoughtful, with every day
that widened the distance between her
and her memories.
New friends gathered around them
true friends-and there was more than
one opportunity for Grace to have
accepted lover, only she had no love
20 give, no heart to win.
Her happiest and her saddest hours
we're spent at her desk, or it seemed to
her that it was like a link to the past !;
and one windy, wildly-stormy night,
five years after she had taken up her
cross, for Laurie Marcellus' sake, she
was sitting before her desk making
ont score of bills to the "Misses
Warener, artist dressmakers, "and going
back to one other stormy, snowy night,
when she had said the goodnight that
mean goodbye, although she had not
known it.
She was leaning her head on her
hands, her elbow resting on the slant of
her desk, when, with little crushing
noise, it broke, revealing a shallow
aperture, of whose existence she had not
the slightest knowledge.
She looked in, and all the blood in
her body seemed to rush madly to her
brain; for there, lying in the little
secret place, fresh and clean, as though
laid there an hour before, was a letter,
stamped for mailing, and directed
plainly to herself" Grace Warrener,
The Willows" and-in Laurie Mar
cellus' handwriting.
She dared not touch it for minute
She feared she was in the midst of some
improbable dream she wondered if it
were possible she had gone suddenly
daft.
Was it lctter-to her-from him 4?
But how-how could it have got there,
when the desk had been locked, in her
room, for years?
Then she touched it, half expecting
to see it vanish before her eyes. But
it did not vanish; it was all true
a letter, for her, from him, and it had
laid there all these years, so near, so
far
She sank trembling on the chair and
opened it-Laurie Marcellus' proposal
of marriage; his avowal of love his
manly sympathy and pitiful tenderness
because of her fathers financial trou-
BILE his caressing pleading to be al
lowed to comfort and protect her as his
wife should be comforted and protected
and cherished. He begged for an i'm
mediate answer, and he would come to
her at once if she loved him and did
not say him nay. But if-if there was
no such blessed answer for him-if he
had been presumptuously mistaken
her greatest kindness would be not to
answer him at all
And she had just received it, after
five years.
Poor little Gracel White and trem-
bling, amazed and bewildered, she sat
there long after Margaret had gone to
her own room, so unconscious of the
drama enacting so near her.
He had loved her-he had loved her
after all and Grace's heart thrilled at
that thought, slender though the con-