Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1908-08-25
The fatal Three
MISS II. z. BRADDoN
IT i=--
CHAPTER xyI.-fContinued. !

OAAAA L Ell "a 1.-tOOQlIQueo.l
They were at the Villa Montheuri by
this time, long, low white house, with
stone terrace overlooking the harbor of
Flllefranche. The woman opened the
gate, and Mildred followed her into the
garden and to the terrace upon which
the principal rooms opened. There wls
latticed veranda in front of the salon
and dining room, over which roses and
geraniums were trained and above which
the purple Bougainvilliers spread its
vivid bloom. The orange trees grew thick
In the orchard, and in their midst stood
the stone we'll down which the gardener
ed wife.
Mildred fingered in the faded salon,
locking at everything with melancholy
interest. Those two familiar figures were
with her in the room. She pictured them
sitting there together, yet SO far apart
In the bitter lack of sympathy wife,
tormented by jealous suspicious, no less
agonizing because they were groundless !;
a husband long-suffering, weary with his
little stock of marital love worn out I'M
der slow torture. She could see them as
they might have been in those bygone
years. George Greswold's dark, strong
face, younger than she had ever known it,
for when he first came to her father
house there had been threads of gray in
his dark hair and premature lines upon
the brow. which told of corroding care.
She could understand now how those
touches of gray had come into the thick,
wavy hair that clustered close on the
broad, strongly marked brow.
Poor Fay-poor, loving, impulsive
Fay.
will you show me the place where the
English lady fell over the cliff" Mil
dred asked; and the woman went with
her along the winding road and then
upward to a path along the crest of a
cliff that seemed low on account of those
holder heights which rose above it, and
which screened the eastward-fronting
shore Of the little peninsula from all the
world of the west The carriage road
wound southwark up to the higher ground,
but Mildred and her guide followed foot
path which had been trodden ON the long.
rank grass beside the cliff. The rosemary
bushes were full of flower; pale, cold,
gray blossoms, as beftted the herb of
patches of vivid color among the blue
gray stones scattered in the long grass On
the slope of the hill.
ut was somewhere along this path
way, madame" said the woman. 81 can
not tell you the exact spot. Some fish
ermen from Beaulieu picked her up"
pointing across the blue water of the bay
to a semi-circle of yellow sand, with a
few white houses scattered along the curv-
ing road, and some boats lying keel up
ward on the beach. ''She never spoke
again. She was dead when they found
her there"
did they see her fallY"
"No, madame"
"And yet people have dared to call her
husband a murderer"
''Ah, but madame, it was the general
opinion. Was it not his guilty conscience
that drove him mad? He came here once
only after he left the mad house, wan
dered about the village for an hour or
two, went up to the cemetery and loo ked
once-but once only-at the poor laoy's
grace, and then drove away as if devils
were hunting him. Who can doubt. that
It was his hand that sent her to her
death?"
'No one would believe it who knew
him"
Everybody at st. Jean believed it,
even the people who liked him best"
Mildred turned from her, sick at heart.
She gave the woman some more money
and then with briefest adieu walked back
to the inn where she had left the car
rage, and where the horse was doing
with his nose in a bag of dried locust
fruit, while his driver sprawled half
asleep upon the rough stone parapet be-
tween the inn and the bay.
She had made certain inquiries through
Albrecht, and she knew the way she had
to go upon the pilgrimage on which she
was bent, q pilgrimage of sorrowful mem
DRY. There was a relief in being quite
alone upon the long parade between the
palm trees and the sea, and to know
that she was free from notice and SYM
patty for the rest of the afternoon.
The horse ratified off at brisk pace.
They came by and by to a spot where,
by the side of the broad high road, there
was a wall inclosing a white dusty yard,
and behind it a long white house with
many windows, bare and barren, staring
blankly at the dry bed of the torrent and
the rugged brown hills beyond. At each
end of the long white building there was
a colonnads with iron bars, open to the
sun and the air. A cluster of idlers had
congregated about the open gate to stare
and listen: for the great white house was
a madhouse, and the grated colonnades
right and left of the long facade were the
recreation grounds of the insane-of
those worst patients who could not be
trusted to wander at their ease in the
garden, or to dig and delve upon the
breezy hills toward st. Andre Mildred
told her driver to stop at the gate. The
patients pacing up and down, or hanging
on to the bars, or standing staring at the
little crowd round the gate, moved her to
deepest pity, touched her with keenest
pain. He had been here, her beloved, in
that brief interval of darkest night. She
recalled how in one of his awakenings
from that torturing dream he had spoken
words of strange meaning-or of no mean
Ing. as lhey had seemed to her then.
The case-the cage again - he had
cried in an agonized voice; Iron bars
like wild beast ~
These words had been an enigma TO her
then. She saw the answer TO the riddle
here The loiterers were full of specu-
latious and assertions. The porter at the
gate answered some questions, turned a
deaf ear TO others.
CHAPTER XVII.
Mrs. Greswold had inquired the name
of the doctor of longest experience in the