Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1904-12-02


we are all poor Do not torture her,
you who love her. Go away and let
Doctor Worthington win her."
.'She will never love him."
mot il you are here"
Il will go then. You will let me tell
her?"
why? 1t will only make her life
harder, If she thinks you suffer. I will
never force her to marry. Buff
Doctor Worthington can win her, |
tell you frankly, it will make me very
happy"
So Bert-honest, loyal Bert-for his
yer ylove's sake, turned his face from
his love and went to another city,
where he was offered a position as
assistant editor upon a magazine, that
was to be fortune in the future, but
in the present was rather log on the
necks of the proprietors.
And Eloise, wondering at Bert's de-
sertion, knew all the sunlight was gone
from her life when he said farewell.
There had been no secret in Bert
parting with his friend. Frankly he
had told him his hope, love and de-
spair, and pathItically implored him
to cherish Eloise lovingly, if he could
win her love.
Even while he spoke, Cyrus Worth
ington knew that this love would
never come to answer his wooing,
knew that one word of his could food
two lives with happiness, yet kept
silence. In the days that followed,
when he wooed the fair, pale girl, ten
derby, devotedly, no pang of remorse
wrung his heart, though he knew he
trod carefully upon all loving flowers
of hope in hers. He was man who
could have seen his own mother
writhe in agony, if by her torture he
could have wrung one new fact for
science, and in the scheme of his life
the heart-pangs of girl counted for
less than nothing.
And while he courted the unwilling
love patiently and gently, Mrs. Hunter,
with her failing health, her pale face
and weary step, pleaded eloquently in
her very silence. A home of rest for
her mother was what Eloise had been
promised in delicate words that could
not be resented as bribery.
Your dear mother may live for
years in quiet house, but this con-
slant care and toll is killing her!"
So, little by little, wearing out the
young hearts constancy by steady per-
severance, Cyrus Worthington won
Eloise for his wife, She told him she
did not love him. but knowing nothing
of Berts spoken love to her mother,
she kept her maiden secret folded close
in her own heart, and whispered moth
ing of her love for Bert. If on her
wedding day her white, drawn face
was corpse-like in its forced COM
posture, what cared Cyrus Worthington
for that? He had won his game.
Only one week after his wedding
day, leaving Eloise with her mother,
he wended his way to the Office of a
leading lawyer and asked for an in
terview.
"You were lawyers for Gervase
Hunter?" he asked.
1--WE WERE"
"You are aware that he died in Paris
last September"
"Our business has not required cor
respondence since that time.''
'I was his physician, and to me he
committed the care of all his papers,
his will among the number"
HIN, making you his heir?"
mo, sir, making his nephew's only
child heiress to his wealth, nearly a
million, understand.
Nearly double that sum. You will
leave the papers?"
"Assuredly, and Mrs. Hunters adj
dress. Miss Hunter became my wife
one week ago. / leave you the adj
dress of my assistant in Paris, the
lawyer who drew up the will, and the
witness, that you may ascertain that
all is correct"
And, unheeding the lawyers keen,
scrutinizing looks, Cyrus Worthington
bowed himself out of the Office.
"a bold game" the lawyer muttered;
che has played his cards we'll"
And while he spoke there was a
noise in the street, rush of many
feet, Gathering fall
"a scaffolding on the house next
door has given way" a clerk cried
with a white face, land there are men
killed. Nine or ten, they say
Nine or. ten bricklayers, masons,
carpenters, and one gentleman who
had been passing by, and in whose
face the lawyer recognized the fea-
lures OF his late visitor.
Dead, with his scheme complete.
Dead, with the road to his ambition,
gold-strewn, open before him. Dead,
with his hand upon the wealth he had
planned to win. Dead!
They carried him home to his young
wife, and tenderly broke the truth to
her. Even in the first shock she felt
her heart recoil when the lawyer told
her of the errand completed two min
utes before her husbands death. She
had not loved him, but had she never
known his baseness she could have
mourned kind friend last
1t was two years before Bert came
to share her home, to fill the paradise
her mother had painted. But in their
happiness they gave Cyrus Worthing-
tons name the charity of silence.
Never is it spoken by the wife he
deceived or the friend he wronged.-
Waverley Magazine.