The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-02-13
quarreling over their work in the

her TO acknowledge. The homely and
simple waS of life at Christslea were irk-
some and barren to her. All which she
had despised, whilst she had enjoyed
them, of the beauty, the graces, and the
luxuries of existence were now lacking to
her, and she missed them with contin-
ual sense of needof them, which surprised
and mortified her. She had believed
herself wholly indifferent to those mere
externals; those elegances and in
dulgences which in the imagined asceti-
cism OF her remuneration she had counted
as wholly unnecessary to her. She
missed them at every turn, at every mo-
ment; she realized how much they con-
tributed to the ease and grace if not to the
happiness. Her father had voluntarily
resigned them all and no expression of
regret for them had ever escaped his lips,
and she had fancied she could emulate his
/ philosophy. But the youth and the sex
/ in her had not either his resignation or
/ his endurance; and she suffered from the
mere physical and material deprivation OF
| her solitude as he had never done, having
attained the tranquility of middle age and
/ a scholars stoicism. She had over-esti-
/ mated her own strength, and underrated
the power of memory and desire.
Thelittle lonely house which had been
/ the heaven of her childhood was the prison
| of her body and her spirit now. She had
| force of character enough to make her adj
/ here to her decision, but she had not cold
ness of nature enough 20 make her at
| peace in it. She had known all the fullest
| joys of the passions, and all that the world
could give of pleasure and OF admiration.
| She could not resign herself TO these
empty, joyless, stupid, eventless hours,
he loI oAh ato nj
| monotony as the lengths of gray worsted
rolled off the ball with which the old
hOusekeeper knitted hose from noon to
| night, by the hearth in the winter and in
the porch in summer.
1t was IN vain that she strove TO find
those consultations in study which her
father had never failed to find; in vain
! that she opened the black-letter folios and
the Latin volumes, in which as child she
| had thought it her dearest privilege to
read; in vain that even in her fathers
own manuscripts she found nothing Of
wisdom, although their precepts of pa
tience were as true as those of Publius
Syrius. In vain did she seek those calm
and golden counsels; they fell cold as icy
water on the heat and pain of her restless
sufferinv. When she looked off from the
written or the printed words she saw the
face of her rival, and she heard the voice
OF her husband saying always: "She is
the only woman whom have ever loved.
God help me~
Often she pushed the books and papers
aside, and went out in all weathers, when
the white rain was driving in fury over
the moors, and when the waves were rising
in wall Of foam to break in thunder on
| the beach.
Nothing hurt her. She returned home
often drenched TO the skin, but shetook no
harm. Great pain, like great happiness,
often bestows an almost more than mortal
| immunity from all bodily ailments. "And
| / am always well ;" she sometimes thought,
almost in anger with nature for its too
abundant gifts to her of health and
strength,
He will think do not care" she said
to herself bitterly, "because | do not die!"
She knew that, with a mans hasty and
| superficial judgment he was very likely
to think so ii he thought of her at all.
From the summit of the moor which
rose behind the house she could see
Ladysrood in the far distance On the
| rare days of sunshine the gilded vanes and
the zinc roofs glistened IN distant points
of light above the woods. The great house
was left to that silence and darkness which
|
years Once or twice some OF the old
| servants came to Christslea and begged to
see her, for she was beloved by the house
hold; but she did not encourage them to
return. She had sent for her dogs and for
some OF her books from there; that was all.
She would not even have any OF
her clothes. With an exaggeration
of feeling, which even to
Aubrey seemed morbid and overstrained,
she stripped herself of everything which
had become hers by her union with
Guilderoy, and wore the plainest and the
| cheapest clothes that she could find. But
the beautiful and symmetrical lines Of her
form gave their own nobility to those
humble stutfs; and in her rough serge,
white or black, she had no less distinction
than she had had in her pearl-sown velvet
train at a state ball.
The insincerities, the conventionalities,
and the feigned friendships of society had
always been painful and oppressive to
her, even when she had been compare
lively happy amongst them. In her pres
ent circumstances they would have been
an intolerab.e torture. She had her faith
ers sensitive horror OF compassion and of
comment, and if alone and wretched at
| Christslea, she was, at the least, unmo-
| Tested. Her retirement had been a nine
days wonder to her acquaintances; in a
short time other mysteries, other scan
dals, other interests. took its place. She
was not there; others were Society, with
the indifference which follows its curios-
ity as surely as night follows day, ceased
to speak of her, and almost forgot that she
existed.
She had been left unopposed to abide by
the choice she had made; and of her hus-
band she heard nothing. He had passed
out OF her existence as utterly as though
he lay in his grave like her father.
eff he were dead they would tell me, I"
she thought; if he were dead they would
remember, for day at least, that she was
his wife.
UncOnsciously to herself, her selection
of Christlea, amongst other reasons, had
been actuated by the sense that there at
least she would be sure to hear if any ac-
cident or illness befell him. She could not
bring herself to ask for tidings of him even
of Aubrey; but she knew that the lord of
Ladysro0d could have no great i'll happen
to him without such at once becoming the
common talk of the whole country side.
Day and night she thought Of him as she
last seen and heard him, passionately de-
claring to her his preference of her rival
and his allegiance TO her. Yet even in
that moment he had seemed 10 her
stronger, manlier, more worthy, than he
had seemed 10 her before in the incessant
duplicates and the half-hearted intrigues
of his other and less open infdelities- At