The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-03-20
GUILDEROY
#OUIDEM - X
Author OF "Under Two Flags" 1.-TWO Lit
tie Wooden Shoes" "Chandos,"
"Don Gesualdo," Etc.
CNOw first published. All rights reserved. ]
CHAPTER LVIII.

ease with which his nature had hitherto
met the complexities Of human life.
He was not sure whether he most
wished or most feared his wifes accept
ance of his offer. He had been entirely
honest in all that he had written to her
and to his cousin; but he dreaded the re-
suits of it with that shrinking from all
pain and all obligation which had always
been so strong in him.
He could not dismiss the anxiety which
governed him; he could not eat or sleep,
or seek his usual distractions in this city
which was so familiar and so pleasant to
him. He was restless under the sense
which haunted him of the inevitable
scorn with which Aubrey would regard
his vacillatiOns and his confidence, and
he already repented the impulse which
had made him select his cousin as his in
teTcessor.
He wished that he had gone himself
without any preparation or meditation to
Christslea as the day and the night wore
onward and each succeeding hour might
bring hm a message from Aubrey.
His heart ached for the first time in his
lie under q wound which could not be
closed or stilled by any anOdyne of
pleasure. The humiliation with which
filled him would not pass away for many
year; perhaps never.
He was conscious that she had weighed
him in the scales of her fine intelligence
and found him wanting; he knew that he
had failed to respond to her Imagination;
he knew, too, that what she had ceased
TO give to him she might give to others.
lie had been weary, dissatisfied and
haunted by remorse when with her, but
without her his existence was blank and
his soul torn by vague but intolerable
jealousy.
He who had never before known that
passion which is the companion of un-
happy loye was now, if it be possible to be
so, jealous at once of two women whom he
had possessed utterly, and yet whom he
had both, through his own Inconsistency
and vacillation, lost; and for the first time
IN his whole life neither his careless phi
losophy nor his swiftly changing caprices
could solace him or build up anew the
clOud-palace of armOrous content. He was
dissatisfied with himself. All that was
best and most spiritual in him condemned
hla In his own eyes. He could have de-
Tended his conduct easily to others, but he
could not defend it to himself
1t was dawn in the streets of Paris, and
birds were twittering in the line-trees be-
meath his window when his servant
brought him the telegram he was expect
ing from his cousin.
He tore it open nervously.
''I have done what you asked" said
Aubrey, IN il. 81 have no mandate from
her, but 1 believe it viii be as you wish.
Go yourself"
Was he glad or not. He could not tell.
lie was conscious of weight OF duties
and obligations which rolled back like a
stone over his life, and he was also con-
scious Of that relief which comes from a
choice finally resolved and a conscience
quieted and appeased Amidst all the
chaos of his thoughts he was touched to
admiration of Aubrey's generosity and
loyalty. Not one man in ten million would
have accepted such a task, or, accepting
il, would have executed it to the end with
perfect self-abnegatiOn. He could not
have reached such stoical nobility hin
self, but he recognized the greatness of it.
Il shall 90 to England this morning"
be said to his people; and as he spoke,
the door Of his room opened and his sister
entered. She had arrived that moment
In Paris, and had come there without
changing her clothes, taking an hours
sleep or breaking her fast.
He saw her with displeasure. They had
not met since the late summer which had
followed John Vernon's death; and the
remembrance Of her letters which he had
read in Venice was fresh and hateful to
him.
She seemed ever TO him ike bird of
evil omen, watching and waiting till the
corpse OF some dead human happiness fell
10 her. And yet she was what the world
called good woman-pious, chaste, vir-
tuous and wise.
Df5
patience and discourtesy, making no affect
alton of a welcome which he could not
give, or of a pleasure which he could not
feel.
as that all the greeting YOU give me
after all these months? ?"
81 can not pretend what 1 do not feel"
he said iyritably. ~ am sure that you
would not come to me thus, unannounced,
unsummoned, unless you had some bad
news to bring or some cruel suspicion to
suggest"
"You are unjust"-her voice was
broken, her lips quivered she was tired,
cold and unnerved. In her own way she
loved him, and she felt that even such af-
lection as he had ever felt for her was
gone.
Il am not unjust" he answered coldly.
"You have never ceased to irritate and
aLendLe me. 1Ou mean Well, perhaps,
but If you have the intentions of a saint,
you have the insinuations of a fend |
received all your letters in Italy. never
answered them because they offended and
disgusted me. You always hated my WIFE,
You recognized the fneness of her nature,
but you never ceased TO be pittiless to her.
] do not know il, but L am as certain as
that we stand here that it was you who
informed her Of my relations, before my
marriage, with the only woman / ever
loved"
''I thought it right that she should
know of them" replied his sister, who
was never without courage. "And those
same relations renewed after marriage
have been made public to everyone by
yourself"
"What is that to you?" said Guilderoy,
white with ill-controlled passion "You
are not my keeper. 1t is nothing to you
what do. You are good woman-oh
yesl-and you make your virtues into a
sheaf of poisoned arrows with which you
slay the lives of others. What did you
write-what did you dare to write-to
me in Venice and elsewhere? You Sian
dered Aubrey, whom the whole country
respects; you slandered my wife, whose
first and stanchest friend you ought to
have been; and you insinuated to me sus-
l.. u II L n