Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1896-04-28
CHAPTER III.

Ten years had passed away since the
time OF that wedding tour.
Ten years 1t is very long time in O
life. 1t makes a young man middle
aged and middle aged man old. 1t
takes away the bloom of youth and
tho ignorance of the most inexperienced,
and yet what a little while it isl No
more than a day when you look back
upon it. Sometimes when you travel
back the same road that you have gone
over tenyears ago, and SEQ the mountains
standing where they were. and the sun
shining Oh the sea and village roofs and
church towers precisely as it did, you
feel as if there had been no interval
at all. us If ten years were nothing. But
this was not how it happened to the
traveller of whom have another brief
incident to tell!
The train from Marseilles to Nice,
which is called the Rapide, goes every
day. and most people one time or an
other have travelled by It. One bright
morning i'll March one of the passengers
IN this train established very comfort
ably in the best corner of a sleeping car
riagc i'll which he had passed the night
luxuriOusly, and from which he was
now looking out upon the shining sea,
the red rocks. the many bays and head
lands OF the coast. suddenly received
such shock and sensation as seldom &C.
ours to any one. He was man of rather
more than middle age, and not of en-
gaging aspect. His face was red, and
his eyes were dull yet fiery. He had the
air Of man who had INDUCED himself
much and all his inclinations, had
loved good living and all the joys Of the
flesh, had denied himself nothing-and
was now paying the penalties Such
men, to tell the truth, are not at oil I'M
usual apparitiors OH that beautiful coast
or in the train Rapide. No doubt ap-
pearances are deceitful, and it is not al
ways bad man who bears that aspect
or who pays those penalties, but in this
case few people would have entertained
any doubt as to the facts Of the case.
His eyes were bloodshot, he had q
scowl upon his brow, his foot was sup
ported upon a cushion. He had a serv-
| ant with him, to whom he rarely spoke
but with an insult. Not an agreeable
mainland tho life he was now leading,
whatever it had been, was not an agree
| able life. He was staring cut of the
window upon the curves Of the coast,
sometimes putting up the collar of his
fur coat over his ears, though it was a
warm morning, and the sun had all the
force of April. What he was thinking
Of it would be difficult TO divine-per-
haps of the coed dinner that awaited
him at Monte Carlo when he got here,
perhaps Of his good luck in being out of
England when the east winds began to
blow, perhaps of something quite differ
cnt. His thoughts which he had in his
heart were often not pleasant thoughts
nowadays, though (or perhaps because
he was a man who never had denied him
self any n easure. and it was his inten-
ton now to escape for little from the
doctors who tormented and provoked
him, and to have his own way for lit
tie while, whatever the consequences
might be-though indeed he had not
the faintest notion what in the first
place. and TO the interruption Of every
plan, theseconseQuencesw ereabout to be.
The Rapide does not stop at such
small places as st. Honorat, which in
deed had not succeeded in making itself
winter resort. It was still q very