The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1895-02-28

Dear Tom"
hending fashion, but they had smiled
at her aspirations and ambitions as at
the amusing vagaries Of q petted infant.
They gave her the harp OH which she
wanted to play. just as they had given
her the talking doll she coveted and
made friends with when she was child.
They let her buy herself poetry books,
just as they had let her buy sweetmeats.
They were good and dear-oh, SO good
and dear!-she said to herself on this
morning Of her thirtieth birthday. But
they did not know her. No one had
ever known her. Of that she felt GER
tain.
She took little hand mirror from
her dressing table and began to study
her face in it. The features had not
changed very much since she was 20.
Perhaps the eyes were little more sad,
and the cheeks had not quite the wild
rose bloom that belonged to them ten
years ago, but really there was not so
very much difference. Then she held the
glass nearer and looked in it little
more closely. There were-yes, there
were-wrinkles, slight, yet unmistaka-
BILE, at the corners of her eyes, They
were big blue eyes, by the way, with
black lashes The young gold of her
hair was turning to autumnal brown.
And the lips that had never been warm
ed by kisses seemed to have grown
thinner
"Yes," p" she said, "ah, yes, I am old
nrf I ~ ~, tho f,1oco T
SO pretty as was, but what good did
the prettiness do? Who ever loved me
really, unless She did not finish the
sentence. If she had, it would have
been "unless Tom did" "
And then she laid down the glass,
and her thoughts went on long Jour
ney, back to the faraway days when
Tom Rhodes used to come home with
her from all sorts of places and look at
her with such eloquent eyes that she
had not forgotten their language even
yet. She had never let him go farther
than looking, however. The world
her unconquered kingdom-was all be-
fore her in those days, and she did not
mean to take Tom for prime minister
He was dear, good fellow. She used
always to think that when she thought
about him at all. But there were poets
in the world, and painters and states
men, and Tom-was only Tom. He
taught school in the winter and was
busy on his widowed mothers small
farm in the summer, and try how you
would you could not fancy him in the
aspect OF a conquering hero. So she had
kept Tom from speaking, and finally his
mother had died, and he had sold the
little farm, had gone away to that
vague part of the world known in those
days as ''out west" What he had done
there or what had become of him who
knew! Not Eleanor, at any rate.
She wondered if it We're such keen
torture to other women to feel that they
had grown old 1t seemed to her, Just
then, that youth was all--all. She had
quaffed its wine, and now in the cup
were dregs only And then she sadly
smiled. What wine had she ever auaff-
ed, after all? People used to call her
beautiful-and surely she must have
been at least pretty-but what good had
1t done her! The right suitor had never
co3c. or the few who seemed to care
for her she thought in this hour only of
Tom. She remembered tones and looks.
Shy flowers, shyly given; tender little
cares fof her comfort in small things.
But III those old days her.ambition soar
ed far beyond Tom. Would it have
been better had she cared for him?
Would he have understood her? Would
love have made that possible? For she
felt low that her deepest longing had
always been to be understood. Love that
was given to the external Eleanor would
mover bare been enough. She must meet
some one who had the key to her deep
est soul, else must she live and die more
solitary than any monk Of old in his
hidden hermitage
Could it 10 that she had thrown away
what might have been lifa's fullness OF
JOY? All, well, 1t was Of no use to won
der nowl Tom was far away, and she