Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1905-06-09
CHAPTER XVII.

Far in the night the mother and daugh-
ter again lay down to sleep that came
readily to the elder woman, and far more
tardily to the younger. In Lizzy's CEN
tral thought two opposite and irreconcila-
bic solutions of one problem contended
for sole recognition. Had Mr.. Mason
played parts in everything he had done,
as she had charged him yesterday even
ing, and which he had not denied in so
many words? She had charged him with
this, and much more! She had charged
him with studied and persistent eulogisms
of an unknown man for the purpose of
piquing her womanly curiosity, and there
by amusing himself. He had gone on
with it day after day, week after week
and month upon month, until he had
fully succeeded in bringing her to love
him and to yearn for him.
How many and many anxious hours
she had passed in doubts and fears for
his safety! How eagerly she had pored
over chance newspapers from the great
city, and from remote parts of the coun-
try. hoping and fearing that she might
see some mention of the beloved name
And how she had beamed with gladness
at each return of the absent man, an
nounced always by his assistant, and by
no one else
What fool she had been! Even he
said, last night, something about her sus-
picon reaching its zenith weeks ago in
stead of beginning to dawn only the day
before, when she had seen him driving
through the streets of Sandtown, and
without his principal!
His principal, indeed She had thrown
that fraud at him hard enough, she hop
eu. She had given him to understand
that there was no longer the slightest
chance to continue that imposition upon
her.
Mr.. Huntley, the man of straw! The
myth! The creation of, the man who had
palmed himself off on her as the assist
ant of his man of straw! A noble and
a worthy work for man of his attain
ments! All this merely to amuse him
self, while he was living in an enforced
exile from the city. She had hoped she
lad thrown that at him hard enough.
But again, there were many, many sin
ccre looking and earnest-sounding things
that he had done and said, all along. He
ndu souSnI Her CompuHy from une 0rSt
day, and persistently and continuously
kept it. His manner was not that of
the languid and impatient man of the
world. tired of his enforced seclusion.
No. He had set himself about a labori-
Gus task of bringing her to see some
glaring deficiencies in what she had
thought was her all-sufficient self. He
had gone further. He had shown his
great liking for her. He had, in effect,
sought to tell her what everybody had
long before said again and again-that
it was the planest of all plain PROPOSE
tions, that he loved her She had laugh
ed at that! She had even confessed her
love for his principal-Huntley, the man
of straw; the myth; the creation of an
idle fancy Not only SO, but she had
told him plainly that she could not then
tell whether she were not irrevocably
bound, by a strangely romantic passion,
to what she at last recognized as the
mere creature of another mans idle
fancy. That had gone home to him! That
had hurt-if he could be hurt.
And here, upon this very point, were
few things that she could not help 60
ing over and over. And never did she.
in reminiscence, approach the chief of
these episodes that her heart did not lea D
and her ultimate fbrils tingle, with some
thing closely akin to happiness.
First that sudden and unexpected ap-