The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1881-07-22
A MAN-HATER.

s'That girl p
Leslie Morgan turned to his compan-
ion with prolonged stare of inere-
dulity.
81 tell you it is true" persisted his
informer. "Wilna BARRING gton is known
as man-hater to have a heart imper-
vious to all offers of hand and fortune !;
doesn't look like it, does she?" with a
musing glance in the direction indi-
Gated ''she is not the child she seems,
though look at her, Leslie how old do
you take her for ?"
Leslie Murdoch looked.
He saw little, rounded, babyish
figure, petite to childishness, robed in o
creamy white lace falling over short,
white satin petticoat, two tiny slippered
feet, the full, perfect, pearl-white arms,
the supple, dainty, dinpled hands were
decorated with an ornament Of no sort,
and the face as coldly white as the face
Of the sleeping dead, was lighted bykss
pair of scoraful, yelvety, palasy purple
eyes that never smiled. The straight.
decisive lips were ripe with scarlet
sweetness, but world Of mocking sar-
casm fingered about them that contra
dicted the childish face and form; the
bronze, waving hair, in whose cleaning
threads SO many lives lay tangled, curled
softly about the blue veinad temples
and broad and white forehead, and was
knotted in heavy braids at the back of
the graceful head with a translucent
pearl arrow.
Leslie Murdoch drew quick breath,
with his very heart on his lips.
eighteen, perhaps" he said, at last,
possibly twenty"
'She is twenty-seven," said Ralph
Henderson, ''and she hates the whole
race of man with desperate fierceness.
She never smiles no one ever provokes
a CLEAN of sunshine in her perfect face !;
no one knows her story. but it is guessed
that some one long since broke her
heart"
'Curse him |" Leslie ground his teeth
as he breathed the words, and Ralph
Henderson looked at him in astonish-
ment.
"You, too ?" he questioned, the least
trife sarcastically.
ssNo, mop Leslie Murdoch was him
self again, easy, gracious, self-possessed !;
"but Ralph, it makes my blood boil to
see such injustice as is revealed to me
each day, as penetrate society secrets.
'tGood Prince Greatheart, z said Ralph,
smiling, "Pm glad some one cares. Shall
/ present you to the princess p and
with more interest than he was won't to
show, this world-weary man of thirty
five, upon whose brow and upon whose
heart sorrow had laid the chilly fingers,
and threaded the luxuriant black curls
about the temples with silver, followed
him.
Wilma Darlington rose with the per-
feet grace and courtesy Of which she
was mistress, without glow of con-
seriousness that she was receiving the
deferential salutation of the lion of the
evening, a man widely known in the
outer world, and whose arrival had cre-
ated no little sensation.
Apparently she had not the slightest
conception of his greatness, but there
was no pique or constraint in Leslie
Murdock's manner. His was a nature
so grand and true, SO broad and sunny,
So warm and tender, that all the fiattery
and sophistry of an admiring world had
failed to sway his majestic intellect or
turn from its perfect poise his manly
makeup.
He felt an interest for which he could
not account in this strange, girlish
woman, whose beautiful eyes met his
with a steadiness and keenness that
almost Disconnected him whose con-
versation sparkled with little CLEANS of
wounding wit and cutting sarcasm ;
whose slow velvety voice held an under
tone of mocking sadness, and whose
breadth and power of intellect amazed
and enchanted him.
Wilma Darlington could talk as few
women he had ever met could, and there
was not glimmer of consciousness in
her manner. He might have been a
petrlfication of wood or stone, for all
the notice she paid, though she was re-
ceiving attention from one who. possi.
bly,, in the dim future might merge into
sultor.
1t was new, and Leslie Murdock liked
it. He had grown amusedly weary OF
women who huttered under his slightest
word and tone. He noticed, in panied
way, that no smile ever curved the set,
decisive lips, even during her mosi
brilliant repartee, and sunny, glancine
mirth. Evidently she talked because
she was society's queen, and it de
manded obedience and difference to its
edicts, and Leslie Murdock's heart
which all these years oil contact will
the world had failed to make aught bui
tender to the suferings of its weary
ones, ached for her.
The sudden resolve to be her friend