The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-02-06

crowded with her fathers books and pa
pers, and bolted the door, and sat down
before the fire on the lonely hearth. All
was still, gray, inexpressibly solitary. The
little place was gay and fragrant and pleas
! ant in summer time, when the hedges
were full OF the songs of birds, and the air
full of the scent OF wallhowers and stocks
blossoming in the homely garden ways;
| but it was intensely melancholy in the
winter season, with the silence of mist and
cold brooding over its solitudes.
She shuddered as she looked at the mar
row easements, where the glass was wet
with the vapors of the morning and the
! gray yelled landscape was dull and blotted
| like drawing soaked in rain. 1t seemed
an emblem of her future existence. She
! for the first time realized the choice which
she had made, the thing which she had
| done.
From the time she had left the palace in
| Naples until she arrived here she had had
no distinct sense of what had happened
to her. She had been sustained by the
! violence and the fever of an intense pas
/ sion. by the iron in her soul of an i'm
mense wrong; she had gathered a fictitious
| strength from the magnanimity and the
/ dignity of her choice and the calmness
( with which she had spoken to her hus-
! band had lasted throughout her journey
/ homeward until this moment, when, hav-
/ ing dismissed the servants who had
accompanied her in London, she had come
| wholly alone to the little house where her
/ fathers memory was her sole companion,
and would be her sole consultation in the
/ future. Then, when, not needing or re-
| plying tC the startled and agitated ques-
| tions of the two old people left in charge
there, she came into ttns- chamber where
| her fathers presence seemed living and
near thing. the sense of all she had given
up, of all she had accepted, came to her
for the first time in all its nakedness and
| horror.
She did not regret what she had done ;
she would have done it again had she been
| called on to ratifv her choice; it seemed
to her the only thing which was left for
! her to do and in common honor and in
! common courage; yet the pale and CHASTITY
terror OF it faced her on the threshold of
/ this chamber like some CHASTITY shape. The
! want of the one familiar voice so often
! heard there, the one unfailing tenderness
| so often proved there, overcame her with
/ the sickliness OF irrevocablc loss. The
| pale gray walls, the pallid vellum volumes,
| the white discolored manuscripts, the dull
| misty windows, the cold hearth, seemed
to her like so many mourners mourning
with her.
Father. father!" she cried piteously to
the blankness which was around her; the
! silence alone echoed the cry.
With gesture of agonized supplication,
OF heart-breaking prayer, she stretched
! her arms out, seeking some shelter, some
! embrace, some kindly hand. The narrow
walls of the little bOok-room went round
/ and round giddily before her sight; the
| easements narrowed into single point of
| light She fell face forward senseless
| upon the floor, and great darkness like
! night closed in on her.
When she recovered consciousness she
was living on the little bed which had
| been hers in childhood, and she saw the
withered brown face of the old woman
! who had kept house there from her earli-
est memories stopping above her in
/ anxiety and wonder. She did not speak,
she did not move; she lay still and gazed
at the whitewashed walls, the slOping cell
| ing, the narrow lattice; and she remem-
| bered to what a future she had con-
demned herself She saw ALWAYS before
her the face of her husband as she had
seen it in the light and shadow of the
Italian moonlight - cold, pale, angry,
/ handsOme-his eyes resting on her with
|
speaking passionate declarations of his
| loyalty TO her rival.
The long swoon, which had frightened
the people OF the house, had been due to
| cold, fatigue, long fasting, and great emo
| ton. 1t left no evil result after it, and
with a new and strange weakness making
| her limbs tremble and her brain turn, she
went down the narrow stair in the morn
ing light to take up that life which was
| henceforth to be her portion.
There was a fire burning on the study
! hearth, and the old folks had set some
| homely winter flowers in the gray Flemish
| Jugs on the center table. The pale sun
shine of fine wintry day was falling on
! the black and white lines of her father S
! drawings on the walls. She shrank into
| his large writing-chair before the table
on which his last written sheet, with the
1 pen on it, lay as he had left it on his last
| day of life, and she tried to realize this
] catastrophe which had befallen her, this
| earthquake which had shaken into ruins
! all her summer world
The violent agitations which had fol-
| lowed on her arrival in Naples, the hur-
| ried and scarcely conscious journey home
/ ward, the suddenness and irrevocableness
! of her own actions, had given her a
stunned and bewildered feeling, like that
| of sleeper reused from his dreams 10
| hear of some misfortune, rudely told.
She had written her letter to her sister
| in-law with clearness, force and calmness,
! but with that effort her nerves had given
way; burning fever, a painful sense of
| exhaustion, had followed omit, and, though
! she had controlled all outward sign of
| them until her arrival at Christslea, they
| left her enfeebled and unnerved. She was
terrified by the violence Of the passions
which she felt, and which had been in
! tensified by the control over them which
! she had maintained whilst in her hus-
| bands presence.
"Am 1 no better than this?" she
| thought, ashamed and appalled, at the furies
which ragged in her breast. She leaned
| over the fire, shivering and hot by turns
as if with ague. She did not regret her
choice; she had no other which would
have seemed to her endurable; but the
| horror of her future was very ghastly to
her, and as she sat alone in the little dull
room, with the rime frost white on the
/ panes of the window and the noise of the
waves coming up through the silence, the
memory of the gay southern sunshine in
which she had left him, the perfumed air,
! the sparkling seas-the Seas of the
Svrens-was ceaselessly before her, and
| life seemed to her burden too intolerable
/ to be borne.
The slow dark day wore on; the clock
I