Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1881-07-21

Marcellus had liked to look into the
pure brown wells of impid light.
"You are SO good, Margaret! do
want desk, if you are sure you can
afford it."
"You needn't say if I can afford it,
Grace. You have as much right to the
money as 1 have. I'm going to buy
myself cashmere polonaise-you can
have the desk if 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' grand mansion, who Sc prince had
taken whim to sell out and spend q
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
cozy 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
days when she was surrounded by Just
such elegancies of furniture, and when
every thing seemed, somehow, to lead
to that one pivotal thought-when Lau-
rie Marcellus had been her friend.
So the months went On, and the two
sisters led their busy life, and Grace was
growing sweeter and paler, and more
patiently 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
to give, no heart town.
Her happiest and her saddest hours
were spent at her desk, or it seemed to
her that it was like 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
out score of bills to the "Misses
Warfener, 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 q 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 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 a 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 a letter-to her-from him
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
letter, for her, from him, and it had
laid there all these years, so near, SO
farl
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 f; his caressing pleading to be al
lowed to comfort and protect her as his
wife should be eomforted 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
no such blessed answer fer 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 Grace! 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-
ISOLATION was.
But of what avail was it now? Where
was he? What might have happened
in that long, fateful interim?
She thought Of it all, keeping virgil
with her thoughts that night. How the
letter had ever come in that desk she
had bought at Dempsey's, she dared not
imagine. Grace only realized that some
tremendous fate had discovered it to- hca.
She kept her strange, sweet, pitiful
secret in her own heart for days, won
dering with every hour if she could dare
take step in the matter.
And then, one day, the auctioneer
who had sold the desk to Margaret War
rener went to her and told her that a
gentleman who had just returned from
Europe desired to regain possession of
the desk sold at Mr.. Dempsey's auction,
as it had been gift to Mr.. Dempsey
from himself, on the eve of his depart
ure abroad, five years before. And
Grace listened with dilating eyes and
throbbing heart, whose beats almost
choked her utterance.
"Tell the gentleman to call here and
he may have his property"
And that evening, when she went to
the door at the sound of the bell, and
opened it, with her face slightly paler
than usual, Laurie Marcellus stood
there.
"I expected you-come In" she said,
gently, while amazed and bewildered he
could only bow and obey.
Then she explained then he remem-
beled leaving the letter in the desk, and
understood how, by accident-nay, by
grim fate-the slant was not fastened
and the letter had slipped into its living
grave to be resurrected after all these
years.
+" I do not know that I should tell
you even now," she said, brayely, "for
| do not know whether you are-are the
same or not. But" and she. looked up
in his grand face, "I want you to know