Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-12-06
CHAPTER II.

When man has beautiful wife and circle
OF lntimates, however well he may have chosen
| his friends, and however long he NAV have
| known them, there is always a traitor among
them; there is always one man who holds no
law sacred where a lovely woman's favor is or
may be the reward of treachery. There is al
| ways one man who disbelieves in womnn's
| chastity and who thinks every mans wife a
possible prize, If not for other men, at least for
himself
There was one such traitor in Maxine de ST
Valliers circle, and that traitor was Vivien. the
novelist, writer who had painted ducbesses
from models picked ont of the Partisan gutter,
who had dissected and analysed and poetized
| and bedeviled his own idea Of woman. evolved
out of his own very nasty inner consciousness.
saw it.
Hector Vivien was neither a shooting nor a
hunting man, cared for neither fox hounds nor
/ faieonry. He would have bored himself to
death at st. Waller lie Roi if he had been with
out an object. Every man who lives in the
country must hunt something, even if that
| something be only a moth or a butterfly.
Nlvlen hunted Lucie st. Waller. The calm,
| high sOuled. beautiful woman was the quarry
which he had chosen, and he fully believed that
| he should succeed in the chase.
| III not today, tomorrow" That was his
motto where women were concerned. Elated
by succession Of facile conauests, he thought
was, to his mind, only the mask worn by all
| wellbred women. Behind the Roman wife
there was always a potential Messalina.
He pursued his accustomed arts very care
fully, varying his tactics iii accordance with his
| surroundings. He was SO subtle that neither
| husband nor wife suspected his motives ST
| Waller apologized to him for the monotony of
life at the chateau. 'You who care neither for
hawk nor hound must find it a very dull bust
ness" he said.
| .sNIv dear Maxiroa Won $oroat thox Than L.
finish my novel and find title for it before the
| end Of the year. Nothing could suit me better
than the repose Of this uneventful life"
| Il fear you did not make much progress with
your story yesterday, monsieur said Lucie
gaily; "you were lettering about the gardens
and the farm all the afternoon"
Dear madame l WIS thinking Of my title
That is the hardest work of ALL"
1t was to be observed that yivien spent day
! after day in the same leisurely meauderinp he
tween garden and farm. park and pleasannce.
or in accompanying the ladies' Of the party to
distant ruins or rustic villages Or indeed. in
any direction that Madame de st. Waller pro
posed for the days drive. He was not ayerse
to riding. was a light weight and rode fairly
well for literary man; so, having found a
mount of st. Walters that suited him to per-
lection, he took to accompanying his hostess
and Madame EvremOnde in their morning
rides, and thus familiarized himself with every
path and glade in the extensive woods.
Lucie showed him the spot where the phan-
tom char-a-bancs was said to have appeared. a
point where the foOtpath branched off from the
road and where giant oak spread his gnarled
and withered limbs, alive and fourishing on
one side and dead on the other, fitting land
mark for a haunted spot.
Vivien was very jocose about the char-a-
bancs, but Lucie checked him with sigh
If the legend were true" she said gravely:
''if some day Maxine were to tell me he had
seen the phantom carriager'
You would guess. dear madame. that he had
supped with the Widow Cliquot over night. -
the novelist answered gaily. He was not going
to encourage sentimentality about q husband
October wore toward its close. pack of
English fox hounds had been brought over to a
neighboring quasi-royal chateau by an Irish
nobleman, a man in whose family sport and
fine riding were tradition. The hounds af-
forded splendid sport and the peer was a social
fortnight and made himself particularly agree
able to the ladies' OF the party. 1t was curious
that, coming upon the scene as a stranger he
should have been the only visitor who saw
threatened mischief in Hector viviens languid
saunterings and close attendance upon Madame
de st. Waller and her friends.
IF was a little more intimate with st. VAL
lier should try to open his ewes about that
! particular friend OF his, said the peer. COM
muning with himself as he drove home after his
second dinner at the chateau. "A fellow who
is able to sit a horse and yet does not care for
riding to hounds in such a splendid country as
this must have some darker game in view l
think know pretty well what the Partisan
novelist is aiming at"
MAXINE had been completely happy during
! those short autumn days. He had not been
outstanding his strength, for he had ridden as
= hard rs anybody else, yet he had felt in better
health than he had enjoyed for the last ten
years, full Of life and vigor. and with an ap-
petite which made him think with pityina
smile of the days when he had trined fretfully
with the choicest entree ut Bignons, and dis.
dainfully rejected the costliest primeurs Of the
season. He felt that he was rapidly acquiring the
hardy vigor Of the genuine campsgnard, and
that henceforth he might laugh at doctors and
, diagnosis.