Valentine Democrat. (Valentine, Neb.) 1900-1930, 1900-05-17
CHAPTER U.

| Mr.. Adrian Brabazon had been an idle,
indolent man, whose prediction was
cOngenial society, and who, when his
| pretty wife died and left him with four
small children, had promptly dispatched
the boys to school, the girls to the care of
their aunt, his sister, shut up at Barons-
ford, and taken himself off abroad. He
spent good deal of money in an easy
going, gentlemanly fashion, passing as an
| invalid, a connoisseur in cookery, a pat
ron of the fine arts, and rambling from
Italy to the South Of France, from Paris
to the German Spas, in a kind of peren-
NAL circular tour. During his travels he
welded a second wife. Beyond the fact
that she was Mrs. Jupp, widow, aged
40, nothing whatever was known of her
antecedents, although the ears of the
Maxton gossips were literally aching for
particulars.
To speak quite frankly, Mrs. Brabazon
was not lady by birth, nor yet one Of
natures gentleWomen. She was a shrewd,
sharp, scheming woman, Of scant educa-
ton, who had worked herself up step by
step, and who had recently come abroad
as confidential travelling maid to an ell
derly lady in bad health. She and her
employer happened to be inmates of the
same hotel in Paris as Mr.. Brabazon. 1t
was an unhealthy season, low fever was
proving about and carried off the elder
ly Englishwoman as one of it's first vic
tins. Mr.. Brabazon himself. became dan
gerously i'll, and was tenderly nursed
back to conyalescence by Mrs. Jupp, who
was a skilled sick nurse and soft-yoiced.
off fnH fhnSi
vague possibilities were floating through
Mrs. Jupp's brain at this period. In ad-
dition to small legacy, she had sue
ceeded to her late mistress handsome
wardrobe, and made quite an imposing
appearance in soft cashmeres and rich
black silks, and dainty little lace caps,
whenever Mr.. Brabazon was sufficiently
convalescent to notice such matters She
spoke of herself as companion only to her
late dear friend" and talked tearfully
Of better days, far more affiuent circum-
stances, and bewailed her losses in an
apocryphal mine in Cornwall Mrs. Jupp
had made herself very necessary to the
invalid; he liked her, he was grateful to
her. She exactly understood his wants.
knew his favOrite little dishes, and did
not suffer him to be troubled or bored
His health was uncertain, he told him
self that he could not dispense with her.
He hated the trouble of combating her
stronger will, and, telling himself that
he was acting for the best, and required
a sensible woman TO look after him, mar
ried her at the English church one morn
ing in November, and, as a reward, his
bride carried him away to Italy imme-
diately after the ceremony.
Gradually Mr. Brabazon became more
and more feeble and decrepit, and during
the last year of his life his mind was
much affected. At first he forgot things
that happened thirty years previously,
then twenty, then ten, then last year
yesterday. His state was not generally
known beyond tie small retipne of Ital-
ian servants, as for years Mrs. Brabazon
had conducted his correspondence and
managed all his business, and his present
unhappy condition made no alteration in
his affairs.
She corresponded with her step-children
from time to time; stiff. conventional let
ters, whose contents might have been
posted in the market place, but she firm
ly repressed any desire on their part to
come abroad and see their dear papa. The
miserable state Of his health, she declar-
ed in one of her first epistles she wrote
to them after her marriage, precluded
their much-desired visit, although per
sonally she was languishing to make their
acquaintance. At last one day they re-