Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1902-03-14
CUPID 1T
WATERLOO
BY WIhhIHM HhosS.
Copyrights. lsal. hy Authors syndisats.l

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tcopyrseht. isai. hy Author. syndieAtsa
aHISTRESS MARGUERITE AN
|Nl TOINETTE CARROLL was a So
Phisticated and wholly worldly person
Of six or seven and twenty years.
To begin, she had money. more
money than any single woman needs;
more money than forty millions of
American women ever dream of in
heir hopes, or hope for in their
ireams. To continue, her social posi-
ion was impregnable. 1t had an edge
# gilt and a full morocco binding;
t was eighteen carat; the real thing;
{, very Kohinoor among social posi-
ions. Mistress Marguerite Antoinette
Carroll was not only a Daughter of the
American Revolution but Colonial
Dame as well. not only had ancestors
IF hers Haunted their curls through
The Caro1inas at the heels of the hard
riding Swamp Fox and helped to pen
The unlucky CORVALLIS into the bear
rap at Yorktown, but other ancestors
more remote had braved red warriors
from Virginia stockades and pursued
them into the rank tangfes back of
the Chesapeake, for the greater glory
IF the king, and the greater safety of
the sucking colonies, long before ever
, Washington had trodden a cisatlan-
tic shore. Now these things be but
| ranity, it may be, but Marguerite Car
roll Rugged them not the less to her
heart, and held high her head because
IF them. But let us proceed with this
sche of possessions.
Item: An education which en-
braced familiar knowledge with half
the capitals and courts of Europe
Item: A face and figure that artists
raved over; crown ofshining hair that
seemed a thicket to entangle even Gu
pid himself.
Item: Miss Carroll was her own
mistress, having neither parent nor
guardian nor trustee, to coerce her
humors or advise her vagaries.
She resided, when she felt like it,
with her Uncle Henshaw and her aunt,
in Washington. Sometimes she paid to
New York and her grandmother q
winter visit long enough to make her
An admired spectator at the horse
show or the opera. Then she would
flee to California or the Riviera; to the
City of Mexico or up the Nile; any
where her fancy pleased, dragging
along by gilded chain her cousin.
Julia Henshaw, and some conventional
chaperon of eminent respectability
and impartial blindness
Nevertheless, however much one
might think to the contrary, Margue-
rite Carroll was Is wholly dissa tfsfied
with existence as could be woman
nh
health, birth nor beauty She did ex-
actly as she wished, yet would have
preferred to be one mans loving slave.
She lovedSthe world, yet would rather
have been shut within some cage of
home, subject to the beck and call of a
lord and master. Her soul was starved
for love. She sighed for the heart ties
of an adorer whom she could herself
adore-and found it not. The ennui
Of a safety which has drunk up the
wine of pleasure until one looks upon
the very bottom of the glass possessed
her restless spirit and rendered petu-
liant her strenuous nature, hungry for
love. Under the blue ice of her habit
ual demeanor smouldered sapphire
passions needing only vent to rise to
devouring volcanic flames.
Wooers, yes, in scores, she had had,
and toyed with archly, but not one
had come benath whose mask of words
and conventional protestations she
had not read, or fancied she could read,
the insjnceri!y. of the hunter of for
tunes, the perfunctory laudation of
her undeniable but marble beauty.
She had no soul, all her suitors said, as
one by one they relinquished the seem
ingly impossible task of kin0sing a fire
upon the frigid altar of her heart.
Therefore, at last, from the crucible
of her discomfort, of her increasing
years, of the unrequited- cravings. of a
nature ardent at the core, had
emerged a woman who sought to re-
venge herself upon mankind by art
fully awakening passions she did not
return, by arousing hopes she nur-
tured only that she might uproot. She
declared secret war against the race
of what Mime. Sarah Grand has dubbed
"mere man." and pursued her cam
paigns vindictive1y. Since it was de-
MED to her, alone among women, to
find the soul mate she would select, she
would Fat least be happy in the making
of mankind miserable.
Thus it was, as the season waned.
that Miss Carroll, her cousin Julia, the
discreet Mrs. Sylvester Beaumont,
their travelling sacrifice to the propri-
cites, hurrying eastward from sum-
mer voyage to the great Muir glacier,
Sitka and Alaskan waters, stopped at
Minneapolis to catch their breath, and
that Marguerite decided to rest for a
week amid the enchanting autumn
restfulness of the Minnetonka shores
They found at the great Hotel St.
Louis a half emptied house and the
quiet the imperious mistress of the lit