The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-01-04

need three days, at the very least. and
those of almost constant watching"
Just as the voice died away into hollow
moan Georgina slipped within the room.
Her hands were clasped like suppliant's
as she glided up to her husbands bedside.
"oh, Egbert," she quiveringly said,
" forgive mel"
Forgive your he echoed, with a sneer.
Thief and assassin
She shrank backward an instant, but
rallied and reapproached the bed.
II believed was doing right in the eye
of God-I believe ii still; can't help be-
lieving IT, But at the same time your ac-
cusation is so horrible. Think: To call
me your murderess-me, the mother of
your children! All, take back this awful
charge, Egbert! l don't deseryeit! If you
should go before you had the chance of
saying not you but your anger spoke, why,
then"
both spoke" he returned, with sort
of icy hoarseness In his tone. "You robbed
me, and your theft will cause my death.
The law may not call 1t murder, but justice
calls il so"
MAYNARD, while thus speaking, had
raised himself quite high on the pillows.
AS he ceased, his wife caught his hand be-
tween both her own. Thorndyke strove to
push her back with one arm, while he shot
the other beneath the sick mans
head as it swerved sideways with abrupt
inertia. But Georgina would not be
pushed back. A fierce cry left her lips,
and she dashed forward, with the exclama-
ton:
do have mercy on me, Egberti Do re-
member"
But there she paused. The pillow, the
bed clothes, had become with horrid sud-
denness one scarlet witness of her hus-
bands death.
And after that death Georgina Maynard
was never again the same woman. She
had been left just enough money to live in
fair ease with her two boys, while at the
same time faithfully effecting their educa-
ton. When the boys were a little older
she removed with them into the country
and took up her dwelling not far from that
parsonage of her dead father where May
nard had nrst met her and won her love.
Folk said of her that she had grown sour
and hard, though it was true that her
religious devotions became perfervid
with the fresh lapse of years. As fact,
nearly all her cold curtness of manner was
an outgrowth of that mental fret wrought
by remorse; for though the smart of q
burn may rouse in US temporary forces of
endurance, what if no lotion should ever
dull its pangs, and the nerve centers
where lark our sociality aud amiabiIity
should in consequence turn as unfit for
their Office as the slackened cords of vio-
lins7 Ii was this dreary state of living
that caused Mrs. Maynard to be thought
the grimmest and harshest woman in her
quiet native English village. She could
never refrain from shutting out s1 her
spiritual sunshine with the dark realiza-
ton that she had dealt her husband
his death. Not that she was ever able
to believe her act in destroying the task
a really wrong one. Still, its results las
she gloomily accounted them) had proved
appalling, and for years a ceaseless battle
was waged between her shuddering con-
science and the self-justifying dicta of her
sectarian faith. Ii was battle in which
neither side ever gained a victory: her soul
was the held in which it continued to be
fought. Under its long series of cruel
shocks her health at last succumbed She
died almost friendless, and with her two
sons, now youths who verged on manhood,
standing fearless though reverent while
her grave was closed in the placid little
English churchyard, where her father had
long ago lain down to rest.
Not that Sylvan did not mourn her
death. He was now in his third year at
Cambridge, and much in the shaping. the
caliber of his mind resembled her own. He
was profoundly religious, and at one time
had thought of taking orders. Then he
had been visited by sense of unworthi-
Mesa doubt of his capacity to play any
humanitarian churchmen whose creeds he
honored, yet whose intellects he might
never equal. More than that, his health
was somewhat frail; be had inherited his
fathers delicate constitution; the wear
and tear of such an ecclesiastic life as the
one he should struggle to live would
easily MAIN his powers. Two or three
years before she died his mother per-
ceived this, and her negative counsels
formed his final reasons for not enter
ing the church. On the other hand. she
had fed in him an inclination for legal
pursuits and now that she was dead he
brooded upon her advice. He would bv
no means be penniless; the law was an
eminently polite 7" profession; one could
practice it thrifty without either
oratory or any other sort of aptitude.
To be light in it was another matter,
but 10 be prosperous in il was another still
Poor Syl.a did not perceive the full
sarcasm OF his changing from would-be
clergyman TO would-he harrister But
one day, not far from the time at which he
quilted Cambridge with decent honors. an
American fellow-collegian who was taking
his degree In the same year made him a
very cordial proposition. This young gen.
tleman was named John Wilks Rathbone
I'd, and not the least sign of character
and personality which he possessed was
marked fondness Tor Sylvan. He liked
10 record himself as the grandson of Judge
John Wlks Rathhone, now on the verge of
40, and still shining in New York as that
unhappily too rare parsonage, one of our
judges whose repute no deck of soilure has
touched. Sylvan's friend vas an amiable