The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-07-19
CHAPTER VI.

The short winters day had come to an end, and the darkness brought with it a sense of relief, shutting out as it did the dreary heath lands, over which the wind swept with wild sobbing moans, the soaking woods, in which the constant drip of the rain from the trees overhead sounded like ghostly footsteps in the de- serted pathways; shrouding the grea, plies of white stone scattered over the country, looking like nothing so much as huge tombstones set up over some dead giant, while the rows of sombre yews, planted along the edge of ditches, added to the weird fancy. Under the winter sky and dismal, failing rain, the country lying round the Chateau de NismeS looked like a cemetery of old dead and gone giants.
 Inside the chateau 1t was scarcely more pleasant The wind howled round the house, shaking the windows and trying to force an entrance; and the rain, as il fell with sullen flash upon the stone ter races outside, made it seem as if the ghostly footsteps had left the wood, and were stealthily creeping round, only wait ing for the wind to have forced the bar riers of windows and doors, to enter be- hind it, in order to haunt and terrify in that side room up stairs. For there Madame de vismes lay very ill-dying, the doctors feared. She had been ailing for a long time-for more than a year now, ever since the summer when she had been brought face to face with her sons English wife. The doctors could give no decided reason for her illness. She had grown nervous and irritable. When away from heme-and they travelled a little, to sec if change of air would do her good-she seemed better. But afier their return this winter to their country house in Brittany, she had become worse. She caught cold, and the cold brought on an illness in which she became delirious.
 She raved of nothing but white lilies, and a dead child, and a woman's eyes which loo1ned cut as her from the dark ness, and drove her mad with their bit terness and reproach. For weeks she lay i'll, then slow1y her reason came back to her. She was sitting in her room tonight, still too oweak to go down stairs.
 Her face was turned toward the door, faint spot of color in her cheeks, her eyes gleaming with intense excitement, listening for every sound.
 Down stairs, Armand de Vismes sat in the library, listening too.
 A fortnight ago he had heard a story that had made him rise up from bis mothers bedside, where he had heard it, and swear with white lips and terrible eyes that he would never once more come into her presence till his wife stood by his side
 A story of such treachery and evil that his brain refused at first to understand it.
 He had heard that his wife Esther- his love-vas not false, that she had not refnssa so come to him, og te write to him any lettsx save tAaf one in which she told him tat she thouKht his marriage vas . missake, and that she was afraid of tAe povsssy thaf would come if his parsnas did e they Aad thssassned-ssop his a1loW1nce, and leave him peaniless. That leessr had ben . base fsgezy. Had nst his heaxt told him @ at the timef Ya, fool e he vas, h vould not beliove ik
 He lsazned tAat his fashes and moshex had nsyw written to hex to tell hn of his own Ac6deak ard tAe iIneo that follow ed thsf thsy had ssissd the opportunity q bssaking up the maniags tksy des- ped tAat they had played upon the Wonk pnxf 0f kls n1fure-hiS u1ide and