Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1895-08-09
A DESERT CLAIM.
By MARY E. sTIOKNEY.
tCopyright 1904 by J. B. Lppincott Company.l
CHAPTER VI.

!.
With a curious zeal in contributing
as much as might be to her own dis.
comfort, Edith Ellery for the next few
days shut herself persistently indoors,
devoting herself to certain mending of
Nelsine's. long laid upon the shelf for
its especial disagreeableness. She was
acutely miserable, her sensibilities SEEM
ing compacted of nerves all a-quiver
with anger and chagrin. To her morbid
imagination now the glance of invita-
tion she had directed at Paul Brown on
the night Of the dance had become dis
torted to a gesture which all the world
might have understood. She could fancy
those simple women, so starved for gos.
sip, snatching at the episode as god
send. She pictured them together, wag-
ging their virtuous heads over her in
discretion-hers-whe but the other
day she must have laughed at the idea
of any indiscretion being imputed to
her. She hated Paul Brown with
fierce vindictive anger, that interest in
him should have betrayed her to such
step-in him, Artalissa's loverl And
therein lay the most poignant sting Of
all-that she should have seemed even
for moment to pose as the rival of that
dark faced girl who served in her broth
er's kitchen. With an ingenuity Of tor
ture, possible only to woman with
nerves wholly unstrung, she even fan
cied him comparing them in his mind,
holding them up side by side while he
smiled in masculine vanity, pluming
himself with the fancy that his conquest
had extended from kitchen to parlor.
But in truth Paul Brown had never
been in a more unsmiling mood. He
could not but see in the chill repellence
Of Miss Ellery's manner, when they
chanced to meet, that he was hopelessly
out of favor, and he interpreted it all to
mean that she had repented her impul
sive kindness of the other Sunday and
would relegate him to his proper place
In particular he fancied that her purpose
might be to punish him for that auda-
oious glance at parting which his heart
beats quickened even now to remember.
He grimly told himself that he had
fittingly rounded out a career of wasted
effort by his senseless infatuation for a
woman as far removed from him in &C.
tual fact as if she had belonged to an
other planet. If he had racked his brain
to discover the most irrational thing
left him to do. it seemed to him now it
could have been only this, and yet it had
come about so without any smallest vo-
lition on his part that he felt he should
rail at fate rather than at himself. She
was the first woman Of her class, Of his
own class, as he liked to remember, that
he had chanced to meet in friendly init
macy since his old home had been left
behind. There was that in her pronun-
citation of certain words-little tricks Of
New England speech-in the dainty re-
finement of her manner, even in the per-
fume which subtly emanated from her
garments, which spoke to him Of his
past as nothing had done in all the long
years of his frontier life. he was always
longing to be speaking to her, simply to
hear her answering voice. He delighted
to see her eyes deepen and darken as she
talked, to watch for the smile which
was really her greatest charm. He would
have been Indignantly amazed had any
body suggested that she was only an or
dinarily pretty girl, with a distinct
sprinkle Of freokles across her nose, as
was, in truth, the case To him her
beauty was beyond question, and he
simply marveled that the other boys on
the place could be satisfied with saying
so little about it. The fact that his own
tongue was tied by excess of feeling fill
ed him with dumb longing always to BE-
hearing others speak IF her. He coulA
almost have pinned sonne,s to the trees
for the joy of seeing her praises in ac-
tual words
But now for one mad moment he had
forfeited all her favor, as it seemed, and
his heart was sore within him. He
scarce had guessed himself the message
his eager eyes were telling until b"
caught her answering glance, alarmed,
imploring, with certain sweet help
lessness that had somehow thrilled him
with unreasoning exultation even while
it stirred all the chivalry Of his nature
to repent his precipitancy. With oil
their frightened forbidding there had
been no anger in her eyes that day, he
reflected, arguing in savage protest
within himself that, for very consisten-
cy's sake, she might have been kinder
now.
Man learns with i'll grace the lessons
of pain, and no one can be so ruthlessly
cruel as he whose sensi bilities are blunt
ed by the egotism of his own suffering.
Paul Brown, never 50 i'll humored in
his life as now, instinctively turned
upon Jim Kittery as a scapegoatat hand
for the venting of his spleen. He could
even find a sort of grim amusement, al
most sufficient now and then to divert
him from his own grievance, in goading
this fellow sufferer to the verge of. mad
ness by ostentatious devotion to the
willing Artalissa. Jim, with the keen
eyes Of lover, guessing from the first
the bent of the girls tickle fancy, had
made point of behaving with sullen
rudeness toward his rival, which Paul,
too proud and too Indifferent at first to
notice, now found certain vicious sat
isfaction in avenging. 1t was this, no
less than SORT of desperate ennui lead
a