The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-02-27


affections were wholly Indifferent to it.
The subject occupied his thoughts when
he was alone to an extent which surprised
himself, and rendered him at times pre-
| occupied when in society, or even when
alone with the woman be loved.
The letters of his sister had been so in
| cesssant and so mOnotOnOus In their per-
| petual invective and reproach that he had
wholly ceased to reply to them, and OF
late had long let them lie unopened. Her
| reprOaches had always incensed him and
| now that he felt they had much reason
/ for their outcry, they were trebly irritating
| and distasteful to him.
But when his man of business had left
! him he remembered them and broke the
seals of two or three of the later ones,
/ and glanced rapidly over their contents,
! passing over their oft-repeated cOnjura-
4 tions and condemnations in search OF the
! recurrence OF his cousins name. He
! found it more than once. In the last let
/ ter, which had a date of two months past,
| the writer wrote:
"The whole world is. think, in accord
| in attributing your wife's retreat to the
| influence OF your cousin. 1t may be right,
| it may be wrong; but il is certain that it
| thinks that he, much more than you, has
had power to determine her selection. [
! | give no opinion myself. OF course / al
ways saw that he was more than common
| ly attached to her; but he is man of
| honor, and he would not throw his name
to the four winds of earth as you do yours
for the sake of anv woman. Still, he is
mortal, and the position he occupies is at
once very dangerous and very insiduous
in its appeal to his sympathies. He is
the only person whom she ever sees, and
the only friend who is admitted to advise
her. His sister has repeatedly argued
with him to induce him to see this as the
World sees it but always in vain. He APP
pears to consider that he is the natural
heir to the duties which you have de-
clined to fulfill-to what extent do you
choose him to be so? Whatever may
happen, you cannot complain that 1t hap
pens to you undeservedly."
He read the lines with great wrath and
lntolerant impatience; then tore the letter
up and with it those OF similar strain
which had preceded it. She was always a
mischief-maker, seeing what did not exist,
straining at gnats, weaving ropes of moon
shine, setting friend against friend, and
sowing the seeds OF disuniOn under the
plausible pretext, and, perhaps, in the
honest persuasion, that she was pleasing
God and serving man. He had always
known her to be like that ever since he
had been of age enough TO be at all OBJ
servant of what she did she was a good
woman-yes-like thousands and tens of
thousands of good women, who have all
the virtues in their own persons but have
not in their temperaments one chord OF
sympathy, one fiber of indulgence, one
touch OF that erring human nature which
makes the world akin. one single impulse
of that sweet and tender kindness which
sOotbS oud sill ap1 cornfO forts naladipE
which 1t cannot cure.
A perfectly good woman-yes-and as
utterly incapable of doing any real good
by her influence as though she were the
vilest OF her sex. How many OF them
there are on earth, and how many
men have lived to curse them as they
never cursed the sinnersl He threw the
fragments OF her letters with hatred into
the waters of the canal beneath his win
dow. He knew the irrepressible pleasure
in her own accuracy OF prediction, In the
vindicatiOn OF her own forebodings by the
present facts. which had been in her, all
unknown to her, while she had penned all
the invectives and lamentations which
had preceded and followed her introduc-
tion of Aubrey's name. Some hatred he
felt against himself, whose actions had
given up the fair name of Gladys to the
malevOlent speculation OF the world and
to the gratifed jealousies of his sister.
He remembered her as he had seen her
first in her fathers garden in the late
autumn afternoon, with the dogs head
leaning against her knee and the red
foliage of the early autumn touching her
hair. What q base return he had given
her for that sincere and simple welcome
She ha spoiled his life innOcently, and
be had spoiled hers criminally. Absolve
himself as he would, his conscience per-
petually returned to convict him of his Of
tense He forgot the intervening years,
and only thought of her as John Vernons
daughter; the fair and innocent child of
the days before her marriage. His feel
! ings were capricious and ephemeral,
| but they rarely lacked generosity
and he felt that he TO her
| had been ungenerous, that
he had not allowed enough for her youth
and her inexperiepce, that he brought
| against her ignorance all the unequal
forces of worldly knowledge and trained
/ intelligence, and that he had received her
| life into his hands in the mere uniformed
| clay of girlhOod only to throw it in pieces
| among the potsberds of calumny when it
had become the full amphora OF woman
| hood. Again and again this image of her
REQUIRED to him with increasing re-
| proach. He felt an uneasy and restless
| wish TO return to his own country
| for q moment, and TO see for himself what
/ truth there was in all these stories Of Au-
/ brey's visits to her. He did not doubt the
facts; but ne doubted, or, rather, he re-
| fused to believe, the construction put on
| them by others. Aubrey mad always been
| her friend; he certainly would not have
ceased to be so but from friendship to
| love there were distances which he did
/ not credit that his cousin would ever pass.
| The honor which fenced in the wives of
other men had never seemed to Guilderoy
a very high or impossible fence; but the
/ honor which surrounded his own seemed
/ to him sacred and high as heaven. Yet
| he thought often, and with ever-increasing
| irritation, of that stormy and sorrowful
| isolation OF Christslea in the winter sol
| stice which was again so near.
His anger deepened against her with
his remorse. She had rejected all mis-
| offers, she had withdrawn herself from
! his home, she had brought the condemna-
! ton and observation of the world upon
] him by the extravaganza and strangeness
of her actions So he thought and 80 he
reasoned to himself; but all his anger
could not extinguish his consciousness of
! having drawn her into position which
scarcely any woman of her years could
possibly issue from unharmed and un-