The state republican. (Jefferson City, Mo.) 1871-1896, 1895-07-18
THEY TWO TOGETHER.

glad, as though she were in one o.
those moods when revealing and
triumphing in her beauty she mock
ed at the miseries of earth.
Inside the house the scene was q
sad one, for the angel of death was
lowering over the apartment in
which Lady Gertrude lay.
She was reclining on a couch near
the open window, propped up by
many pillows, her breathing being
laborious and painful, but when a
paroxysm more troublesome than
the last arose, it was on Lisbeth's
shoulder, not on the pillow, that her
head reclined, and during several
weary hours of watching, Lisbeth's
arm had supported her.
Sir Clement never left the room,
ne sat in an arm chair, his head
buried in his hands, only looking W
occasionally to gaze at his dying
wife, who could no longer speak to
him, but smiled occasionally as
though to let him know that she still
recognized him.
Only these two watched with low
ing care the woman who had come
between them by Sir Louis order
and so separated them, that she had
even made them break their marriage
vow.
1t was a strange and almost un-
paralleled case that both of them
should so love Lady Gertrude that
each would have surrendered life in
order that she might lihger a little
longer on the earth.
But it was not to be, the angels
wings were spread, and the pure
spirit of her who lay there on Lis
beth's rue breast would, ere many
had passed, be carried away to
her rest beyond the grave.
Yet as Lisbeth sat there looking
pitifully on the white face, wherein
the dews of death were already
gathering, and occasionally with her
disengaged hand smoothing the silken
tresses from her brow, she never
once thought of what her W posi-
ton might be, when Lady Gertrude
was dead.
The offer of thanksgiving that was
her lips was, that her own earnest
prayer had been answered, and that
this pure sweet woman would never
know how foully she had been
wronged, or into what an abyss of
crime her beloved Clement had sunk
as the sequence of lis first trans
erosion.
When she occasionally allowed her
eyes to wander from Lady Gertrude's
face to his, she shuddered as the
thought came over her of what would
be his fate when he was left alone.
He had struggled and fought with
darkness for Lady G~ertrude's sake,
what would he do now.
knowing him VOL as L.sbeth did,
she dreaded to think of what the
future must bring for him, and what
Lisbeth felt SO terribly when she
the tangled mesh OF
with which Clement Dunra-
vents life was surrounded, was tn,
knowledge that she no longer loved
him.
Pity him, ay from her heart she
pitied him, but love him she no
ouger could.
Lisbeth'a nature was too pure, too
honest, too loya', to have any fellow
with crime. Her loyalty an
ler honesty would keep her true to
aim. Whatever he had done or
become as a consequence OF
his grieVous sins, she would never
desert him, but befriend him
% the very utmost of her power.
Love, however, she knew was dead.
Never again would the sound OF
Element Dunraven's footstep, the
ouch of his once fond lips, make
heart palpitate and the blood
.hrob wildly in her veins. Passion
vas extinct, and it was but a poor
compensation to have no regard, no
respect left, for the man who was
once 80 madly loved. Nothing but
pity, cold w~interly pity.
Ay, so it was, she gazed on his
misery as he sat in the chair
oy the window, and her heart seemed
20 freeze-no, there was no love
there. 1t only seemed to we'll and
bubble up beneath its coating of ice
when she turned in tender care to
Lady Gertrude and sought to mitigate
dying agony of that patient
sufferer.
While the sun was still high in the
heavens the end came.
One lingering look of love for
Clement irradiated the soft eyes,
'ollowed by a sigh, perchance OF
that she was leaving him
to feud with the difficulties OF
life, and then the pure spirit, borne
IN the wings Of the angel that had
been waiting 30 long, passed away
INTO the realms of space.
None other was present, but those
had 30 strangely separated and
who yet were 30 strongly united iu
love for her.
1t was Lisbeth's hand that closed