The Press., 1898-08-04

her shoulder and the sunshine lighting up her blue black hair and the red rose in itP She had always worn the deep red roses in her dark hair after the first time that he had noticed and admired the adornment in his careless way. But then in all ways she had tried to please him. Not a good woman, she had been very unselfsh-and she had loved him. Perhaps, after all, if he had mar ried her instead of coolly breaking to her after their two years together the fact of the other woman in England the sweet, pure girl, his wife-she would have staid with him to the last, nursed him, held to him even in death. We'll, it was over with-it didn't mat ter much anyway-the wife was pro- vided for, and if he went under all alone in this plague cursed town buenoi
 And then, very tired and stupid, his head aching horribly, he stretched him. self on the floor in the shade of the lemon tree and dozed. In uneasy sleep the way with the tifo. In another hour he was quietly raving. The birds flew close and chirped at him curiously. A few lizards, attracted by the warm sun- shine, crawled up and basked on the edge of the patio near him. The sun, going down, blazed furiously on him and increased the fever heat, but there was no one else.
 Just about sundown. as the sun s rays, cooler now, fell athwart the patio and the body of the delirious man, some one, heavily perfumed and in rustling clothes, came through the gate and the shrub bery and stood in the doorway, looking about her with fierce, scornful express sion that slowly faded away as she unused. Over there was the fountain of which they had been so proud. It was dry and grass grown now. The lemon bushes planted by them with so much tender care and pruned and lov- ingly tended were now great rough trees, unpruned and gnarly. Even the big rosebush that they had planted so that she could always have red roses was wild and struggling. Everything dead, gone One slow tear trickled down her painted cheek as she looked about and thought. These little mute things-fowers and the like-will stir even a nameless woman into remorse anu SOAAO w anu ONOA 03OAJ aOAAC04AOos She turned to go, signing heavily. But some impulse moved her. She wanted to go back through the patio to the room that had been hers. One look at it would not hurt, as she was going | away that night. He was out of the city, so she had been told-in Provi- denoia-with that white faced woman, his wife. Nobody would know it if she made fool of herself and cried and wept in that room for a little space. When one has been fool and broken one's own heart, one has to weep. She very nearly stumbled over the form of the man as she went. He was still raving, but not violently, as he lay there, and, strange to say, in Spanish. Perhaps if it had been in his own Ian. l guage she would not have cared. But she listened, her heart wildly beating, as he murmured word after word, | phrases in her own tongue. She listen ed, and soon @ thought struck her there was no mention of the other wom an, his wife, the wife who had gone away and left him when trouble and plague came near. She listened-what was it he was saying, ill a thickened, husky tone? Dolores, te amasl Do- lores, mi querida"- And then, over and over again, sweet Spanish words, always of Dolores. Dolores, not the white woman Oh, thank Godl Then he had not loved her after all-he had married her, but his heart had been true to the poor Mexican.
 | Sobbing now, with all the pent up passion of many past months, the wom- an leaned over and clasped the burning, delirious form in her arms, pressing her lips to the unconscious face and the un- seeing eyes. She knew that it was too late to check the fever now-nothing could be done-there were no medicos, no botica, no drugs, not even water, nothing. He could only die. But she, who had loved him best, could die with him.
 Months after, the plague extinct, two skeletons were found in the patio of the little cottage. One was identified as that of Harry Hastings, M. E., which was fortunate for his widow in England. Otherwise she could not have claimed the life insurance policies. But they were paid, and the little widow invest ed quite a large sum in pretty, black crape gowns. And she was so fair and childish and innocent and helpless in her black robes of bereavement that an- other man, rich one. proposed for her and married her. She lives comfortably and at ease in beautiful English home. So perhaps she is not to be pitied after all.
 And in the Campo Santo on the hill in Guanajuato thepe is 8 grave where lie together two skeletons, those of Harry Hastings and the unknown wom- an who had died With him. They had been so buried to save time. The head stone, erectT by the Cia Unida, says simply, "Henry Hastings, aged 31." So the erstwhile widow is not shocked by the knowledge that Dolores lies there too.-Hewitt Darrell in Argonaut. Reading Character.