The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-03-20

4 emancipation anu cb WCIc
| she only free now l-only a child as she
had been when Guilderoy had found her
! on the moorsl And she remembered Bit
terly that, even if she were so, the world
would only see in her feeling for Aubrey
ambition and acquisitiveness, as it had
seen it in her marriage; and the voice OF
her father seemed TO rebuke her, saying,
as he had often said, in the words of Soc
rates to Critic, "Is it worth while to think
so much of the opinion of others ?"
| No, it was not worth while; all the
natural nobility of her nature recognized
the nobility of Aubrey's words and acts !;
but, womanlike, their austerity, command
| ing her admiration, left her heart cold /;
womaplike, she would have fain had him
think less of honor, more of her. An in
| finite regret, which she knew would abide
with her so long as ever she would have
! life, weighed on her for the pain which
she had brought on him through her un-
thinking acceptance of his devotion and
her too selfish appeals to him. And yet
it seemed to her that after all he loved
her but little Women can never accept
| or understand the farewell of Montrose.
1t only hurts them.
With the contradiction of human wishes,
the simple secluded life of Christslea,
which had seemed hardly better than a
living death, grew dear to her. The even
| and monOtonous time, the empty house,
the homely ways, seemed safe and peace
full. Besides the troubled course of pas
sions, of pleasures, and of pains, which
make up the life of the world, her resi-
dence in this little seaside hamlet ap-
peared serene and secure; as the haven
| OF a religious house appeared to those
who, after the deceptions of love and the
at or h
selves to Port Royal or La Trappe. Its
dreariness, its vacancy, the despair before
it which had often seized her in its long
mOonless winter nights when the silence
OF snow was all around, and in the gray
melancholy summer evenings when the
hOOt of the owl alone answered the lap
ping OF the waves-all these passed away
from her mind she only remembered that
here she had known that freedom from
fresh and poignant pangs which seemed
to her the nearest approach to happiness
that fate would ever give to her.
She shrank from all which return to her
life with her husband must mean for her.
she was wholly honest; and, accepting
what he offered, she knew that she must
fulfill all her obligations to him. Some
women might have made feint of for
giveness only to acquire the means to
him; but any such treachery as that was
impossible to the daughter of John Yer
non. Returning to her life at Ladysrood
must, she knew, mean for her the resump-
ton of all those ties from which she had
for nearly two years looked upon herself
as freed.
She could do nothing meanly. As her
severance from him had been complete
and uncompromising, so she knew that
her reunion with him must be entire, and
her acceptance of him faithful in the spirit
as we'll as in the letter. Only wear ago
it would have made her so happy to have
given that which he sought! Though
she had scorued the suggestion of recon-
ciliation with her lips, she had often
yearned for it in her heart; but ncw-now
it was too late to give her any possible Joy /;
she shrank from its necessity with both
her body and her mind.
"What am / TO do? What shall I
| choose ?'' she asked herself, with passion
ate anxiety to make the choice which
should be right in her fathers sight and
Aubrey's. The one was dead, the other
absent, but both seemed very close to her
through all these hours both seemed at
once her counsellors and her Judges.
At times she remembered Guilderoy as
he had been in the first weeks of their
life together, and then a shudder passed
over her, thinking that all of those costa
sizes, those alterations, those entreaties
| lavished on her then, had all been given
since to others. And at such moments
the quiet chamber, the unbrOken solitude
| OF this little cottage seemed to her the
"haven under the hill" like that which
sheltered the storm-tossed tisher-boats of
Christslea where the cliffs curved inward
facing the setting sun.
She passed the chief portion of the day
pacing TO and fro under the willows and
yews where the marble column said of
him whose mortal frame lay underneath
it, shut within the earth, that death comes
kindly to him by whom death had never
been desired The swallows flew in and
out OF the quiet place, building their nests
in the caves and gables of the church.
The soft, pale sunbeams fell through the
dark shadows of the yew-trees and the
gray plumes of the willows. Now and
then some cry of a fisherman to another
from the shore came family on the air;
and the broad white wing of a curlew
brushed the topmost boughs of the
church-yard trees. When she left her
fathers grave it was again evening; calm
and colOrless and sad as English evenings
are, it seemed like the reflection of her
own soul Her choice was made
1t was late in the afternoon of the third
day when she entered the woods of Ladys-
rood
They were in all the delicate and lovely
greenery of their first foliage. The bracken
and ferns were waving breast high, and
the birds were singing in the brushwood
of the undergrowth and in the branches
OF elm, oak and beech. The ground was
blue in many nook with pimpernel and
wild hyacinth. Across the grassy drives
ever and again deer bounded or hare
scudded. He had never cared for sport
as other men care, and his woods and
forests were for the most part the peace
full haunts of unmolested woodland
creatures. She thought dreamily of the
old story of Griseldis; had Griseldis,
when her triumph came, lost the love out
of her heart which had borne her through
all her trials? Had she, when hidden TO
return to her kingdom, lost all wish for it,
and only felt the heaviness Of the burden
she was summoned to take up-the weight
and Imprisonment of the reunion?
Likely enough; likely enough that
Griseldis had been a happier woman in
her misery, when hope and love had still
been with her, than in her return to her
palace and her pomp.
She passed through all the sunshine
and stiffness and fragrance of the dewy
glades, and entered the great gardens of