Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-04-04

suited the services for which he was needed and in whom no suspicion of the task which his employer had set him. self ever might be feared to rise.
 An absorbing task Gerald soon found it, and one that often had upon him the effect of a gloomful, overhanging sky in which burns single star. Hope was that star, and soon it's brightening orb seemed to throb with the pulsations of its watchers delighted heart. Learn ing from Dr. Thorndyxe that the latter had been prostrated in Chicago by Q rheumatic seizure more painful than serious, he felt thrill of actual terror at the chance of being forced to quit New York. Then, with an immense relief, he read further on in the letter of his benefactor certain other comfort ing words. "Do not dream of hurrying on here," wrote Thorndyke. ''I should simply be nuisance to you as yet. Re- main in New York and enjoy yourself. When I am better I will send for you and we can talk over your future with leisurely phrases. I am distressed to hear of Sylvan's continued nlness-or rather what you call, even more som- berly, his relapse" This relapse af- forded Gerald his sole excuse for not joining Dr. Thorndyke in Chicago. As it was, he felt conscience-twinges at his his own satisfaction. Surely this whole business of ''the elixir was making him grossly selfish. He found it hard work tosympathize properly with his stricken brother-either in speech or in spirit, and Sylvan's plaints, to-day more and to- morrow less dolorous, began oddly to affect his strained and anxious nerves. What, after all, to him was this Lucia, this recurring and unceasing Lucia, who had chosen to shroud herself in shadow and silence? He had his own Lucia" to think of. had Gerald.
 "I keep suspecting that she may after all have been hidden away by that aunt of hers, Mrs. Calderly," Sylvan would murmur.
 But you have seen Mrs. Calderly," Gerald would reply, "and she has told you"
 "Ah, yes, she has told mel But sup pose she has not spoken the truth? She is a little sallow woman with a cross in one eye, who lives in 8 tiny brick house on One Hundred and Tenth street. l never liked her and she never liked me. She is SO unattractive a person CndL dlWayS WOuu0Tcu nOW 6uo COu1O be near of kin to my comely Lucia Once my wife confessed to me that her Aunt Janet disliked me on account of my 'strait-laced opinions But the aversion was reciprocal-indeed, yesi Mrs. Calderly is what she calls liberal, which means that when you take the elevated of an evening up to her remote and ugly little house you are apt to find in her drawing-room at least one or two offensive persons who have hard things to state of every accepted idea, from the Bible to the current fashion in women's raiment. She certainly is not strait-laced; she is excessively loose-laced; for that matter, one might say of her that she dispenses with nearly all stays of any sort, either mental or moral. Lucia always per sisted in being fond of her. But I all ways read in her tart, curt speech and her self-poised manner a kind of pert challenge. She never looked at Lucia in my presence that she didn't seem to say: Why did you ever marry that man?' And when went to her in my great misery after my wife's flight burned all the while to search