The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1894-04-21
thing. I thought I could marry you
on the strength OF that! But I can't

never shall"
As the last word dropped from her
lip she had a peculiar sensation. She
had not meant to say SO much---to;
make that confession. She was now
seized with a curious sense of having
been violently arrested.
3" Will Peters had not moved muscle.
But, somehow, the girl could not take
her eyes, in the pause that followed,
from his face. The silence seemed to
her to last an eternity. Then Peters
turned.
:''Shal we go back?" he asked, with
his quiet unfailing courtesy. "The
tide is coming in"
"Oh yes, these large resorts are all
common-so mixed, you know" Mrs.
Chandos would say, in her dainty,
touch me-not fashion, every now and
then. II shall take my young sister
to some quite different place next
season. But the dear child is anus
ing herself in her girlish way now,
and so, for the moment, I stay on. /
let matters drift.''
Mrs. Chandos was a very clever
woman. She knew that the people
to whom she made these little re-
marks were not thrown off the scent
by them in the very least. But she
had learned the inestimable value of
keeping up pretense-even if it be
one transparent as light to every eve.
~ Nathalie amusing herself! The
pretty women in airy toilets laughed
as soon as Mrs. Chandos' well-shaped
back was turned, and Mrs. Chandos
knew they did. Some very young
be who amused themselves in the big,
played with a hollow, mechanical hi
larity, on the hot glaring piazza and
the great public expanse of beach, but
Nathalie was not of the numb mber-and
why not? When they We're alone in
their own apartments Mrs. Chandos
would ask the question, vindictively,
sarcastically. What did she expect?
! Had she not had, in two months, more
good luck than often befell girl with
no fortune but her face in a life
time? Fate had given her what
she assuredly never deserved when
it threw the handsome son of
a millionaire, this young Acton Rad
sky, in her way, Immediately upon
her dismissal of William Peters. She
had objected to the latter because of
his name, because of his il1-ftting
coat, because of his plainness and
| what she called his Western wildness.
Could any of these charges be brought
against Radsky? He had everything
that women worshipped - wealth,
good looks, the prestige of a slayer
of hearts-and he had put everything
at her feet, and she, mopings about
with q face lofse as her arm, had an
| air of disdaining it all! Mrs Chandos
repeated, exasperated: What did she
expect?
'Nothing"
No. not even her sisters bold and
unscrupulous diplomacies could move
Nathalie out of her curious abstraction
now. Mrs. Chandos might talk abus-
lively to Acton Radsky; she might
throw out deft allusions calculated to
keep up the young mans courage, as
to the languor and Indifference under
which young girls often sought to dis
gulse the feelings of their hearts, but
Nathalie dwelt unheeding in a world
OF her own-a world in which she
groped about strangely, in strange
bewilderment, listening to indistinct
voices, in which she seemed ALWAYS
haunted by something, searching dim
~ Tor something lost.
Mrs Chandos' nervous tension grew.
at last, unbearable. The summer was
at an end; people were scattering:
Radsky had not declared himself-ap-
peared to be growing discouraged,
and Nathalie would not, could not, be
aroused to sense of her responsible
ties! Something brusque, decisive,
must be done. But what? Mrs. Chan
dos took desperate advantage of the
hrst opening that offered to bring the
young man to a full confession of his
sentiments, and repaid the confidence
by bland assurance that those senti-
ments were reciprocated, as he would
find if he openly declared himself
Then she assembled to Nathalie's room.
pale with determination, resolved to
frighten the girl into submission bv
threatening to throw her off If moth
ing else would accomplish her 'purposeh
She found the room EN- pity.
Looking about her in some surprise
she noticed signs of disorder all about
such as are left by person in great
haste. On the pincushion was a letter,
which Mrs. Chandos seized. It was
addressed to her and contained, briefly,
the information that Nathalie had gone
up to town to spend the night with a
girl friend and would not be back un-
til the next day.
Mrs. Chandos stood angry and dis
mayed. Never had Nathalie so eman-
cipated herself from authority be-
fore. AS the elder sister continued to
stare in front of her, her eye fell on
crumpled newspaper lying on the
floor. She mechanically took it up
The first words she saw were those of
William Peters name. The article,
which was lengthy one, gave an ac-
! count of a gigantic failure in which
the young Western capitalists fortune.
had been almost entirely engulfed
There followed a supposed interview
with him at his hotel, out of which it
transpired that he was to leave for the
West On the following day.
AS the paper sank from Mrs. Chan
dos hand thought cut through her
like knife thrust. "Impossible!w
she uttered. 'Impossible!''
= = ): ~''~ 4 ss,-.e \ ~+
f. 'Gone?" repeated the young. lady in
the cab, with white lips. .'Gone?"
The hotel clerk who had been called
| out, thought that she was about to
faint. He had an eye for beauty and
| r