St. Landry democrat., 1886-05-22

read was incoherent and agonized. 1t
was written in haste, with blots and
ensures, and there were blisters upon
the paper where the writer's tears had
fallen. She had known her own I'M
worthiness in keeping her secret all
along, she wrote, but she had never
dared to tell him what her past life had
been. And now he had discovered
her duplicity and wickedness, and she
could not bare to face him. She had
gone away, and she begged him to for
get her. But she loved him, and she
prayed Heaven to bless him.
There was much more to this effect,
and while he read, the shadow of q
horrible doubt fell closer and darker
round his heart. What was there in
the mere discovery, taken by itself, to
| excite such anguish as the letter dis
played. What lay behind the discov-
cry? Was it likely that wife would
run away from her husband and her
home on provocation so trivial as the
discovery of itself afforded. Then all
his heart rose up to defend her. and he
was torn between doubt and trust, and
love and fear, and the little mild pas
sions that had dwelt within him dilated
to giant size on sudden, and took his
soul for a battle-ground, and shook it
with their conflict.
There was no sleep for him that
night, and all next day he wandered
vaguely, trying to make up his mind to
some course of action. His wife had
given him no address, but it did not
seem to him at first that it would be
difficult to discover her in London. But
was her flight in itself confession of
worse than he knew, or could he bear
to hear that confession if it had to be
made, or to hear her denial of it and to
have to doubt her still9
If people always did the plain. COM
mon sense thing, always spoke the
plain truth, and always looked circum-
stances in the face, the world would be
improved out of knowledge Mrs. Ire
garthen had taken perhaps the most
foolish of possible steps, had disguised
the truth, and now ran away from the
circumstances she had herself created;
and yet you shall not despise her if |
can help it. 1t was an innocent cour-
age which had led her-more for her
sisters sake than her own-to the stage
1t was pardonable fear which had
kept her silent as to that episode in her
life. 1t is one of the ways of women to
look their best in the eyes of the people
they love, and this leads them to reser-
vatlons and pretences. A weakness
characteristic of whole half of hui
mainly must not be judged too severe
ly. When she ran away, she did so be-
cause tender conscience, hitherto void
OF great offense, exaggerated her little
folly into crime. She made up her
innocent mind that she was one of the
wickedest women in the world. She
had married her husband under false
pretences!
When Tregarthen turned his back
upon her she read q final remuneration
in the act, and was persuaded that she
had lost him forever. She had no blame
for him then or afterward, and she
recognized the justice of the imagined
sentence, even at the moment when it's
weight first crushed her. The perfect
trust which love should have in love is
a flower of slow growth indeed. Often
enough life is over before it has reached
to its full bloom, though there is this
compensation for its laggard coming.
that when once it blossoms it can know
no decay.
Mrs. Tregarthen went to London,
and naturally enough sought the one
place there which she had known be. |
fore-a respectable, if somewhat dingy,
off the Strand The |
stout landlady had not forgotten her,
and received her kindly. There was a |
faint flavor of home in the suffy bed
room, and at least it was better to be
there than to find a nest altogether
strange. But the foolish fugitive had
run away without any provision, and
mad made no arrangement for those
bodily needs which continue their
claim in spite of sins or repentances.
She had twenty pounds in money, and
Ter maid, being hidden to pack for
london, had naturally foreseen iestivity,
ind had put up all the hapless lady's
ewelry. There was no fear of imme-
late starvation, therefore, but none the
ess that terror doomed from the future.
She was sure that she was forever part
I'd from her husband, and when the
irst agony Of that certainty had settled
Town into dull pain, she had to
hink of ways and means for her sis
er's sake, and in little while (for
eason she had not hitherto dreamed
- for her own.
The maid, who was for the first time
q London. was poorly impressed with
own life, as may be fancied The
tuffy lodging-house was not the sort of
'lace in which Mrs. Tregarthen's posi-
ion gave her a right to bestow herself,
nd the maid knew it. Once or twice
he had surprised her mistress in tears,
nd she had found out very early in the
istory of the exposition that there were
o. IDEAS of fastiuitu in Mrs Tranar |