Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-05-10

''YoU ARE NOT IN YOUR USUAL FORM"
''You are not in your usual form tonight,
Daisy" said Gilbert, who pretends to think a
great deal of my playing.
And then he came over to me and bent down
to look into my eyes. and talked to me ever so
sweetly, and his dear presence exercised the
demon, and that guilty wretch walked slowly
away and went on with his restless prowling.
to and fro. to and fro, like spirit in hell.
/ went on playing, while Gilbert went back
to the other end of the room, where he had been
sitting with mother, and challenged her to a
game at chess was alone in the shadowy
corner by the piano and as played watched
that tall, slim figure, with the bent shoulders,
moving slowly to and fro with gliding mo-
ton.
1t seemed as if now this awful truth had re-
vealed itself. / see Ambrose Arden in a new
light-as if l had been blindfod before and had
made for myself an image OF the man and col
ored it with my own colors.
What a relief it was to be alone at last; yes,
even relief to bid good to Gilbert and
mother, and to lock the door Of my own room,
and to sit down by the fire, face to face with
the grim and hideous truth. WANTED to think
out my horrible idea. to arrange all the facts
which seem to constitute such damning evil
dence against my step-father, to try if could
not acquit him, or, at any rate, write mot
proven" against his crime.
Alas, no! After long hours Of thought. after
a long winter night without one interval Of
blessed sleep. my reason still condemned him.
In my mothers second husband, in the friend
and teacher of all my early years, the man to
whom owed 30 much-in him whom last Of all
men should have suspected, l still saw the
murderer Of my father.
recalled Duverdier's appearance in Gros-
venor square, his persistence in seeing my
step-father. his look of baffied fury as he left
the house. l recalled his appearance in this
place. Would any man without credentials of
a guilty nature dare 60 to haunt a man in my
step-father's position?
Yet this mere fact Of tho mans persecution
would not have influenced me to believe in my
step-father's guilt The evidence that was to
my mind conclusive was the evidence Of Cyrils
appearance and Cyril's conduct upon the day
when he played the listener to a conversation
between his father and Duverder. l saw those
three figures in the lane. Ambrose Arden and
Duverdier side by side, Duverdier talking
angrily, vehemently, though in lowered voice,
and that other figure following stealthily, lis
tening with bent brow and pallid face.
Was it like my frank and manly Cyril to
play the spy upon his fathers movements, to
creep at his fathers heels and listen 10 a conf
Dental conversation? What could be more un-
like his character, as I knew it? Nothing but
the most stringent circumstances would have
forced him into such a contemplate position
And within two or three hours of that scene
in the lane he came to me, changed and aged
as if by mortal malady, and told me that all
was over between us. And this determination.
this abandonment of the whole scheme of his
existence, had been resolved upon since he
LETT the Rectory, in high spirits the most light
hearted of men. What but some awful revela-
ton could have SO quickly changed the whole
color of his life?
This was the evidence that weighed most
heavily with me; and next to this was the evil
dence of my step-father's decay, the gradual
deepening Of the gloom that had darkened
over him in the midst Of the happiest and fair
est surroundings.
oh, what cheat and trickster, what a prince
Of villains he has been, to play SO patient a
part, to SOW the wicked seed at the first chance
Fate gave him and then to wait seven years for
| the harvest. Had he asked my mother to be
his wife within year or two of the murder her
eyes might have been opened, she might have
| suspected that no had some part in her hus-
bands death.
| No, the dear mother must never, know this
hideous secret, il any power of self-repressiou
on my part can keep It from her. And so
have day after day to sit at table with the
man who planned my fathers death; and
have to repress all signs of repulsion, and to
seem all that 1 once was to him, at leas. in my
| mothers presence.