The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-04

| Peden looked quite serious, and with 1 his long fingers he combed his long beard very thoughtfully, but his words nevertheless made no deep impression upon me at the time-I suppose my mind was so nearly filled with other subjects that there was no room in 1t for Bucks.
 Mrs. Warren, Alicias mother, arriv- ed suddenly in Frankfort, and fol some reasons l was not sorry to know of her presence. Although I could nev- CT overcome my repugnance to the Wo- I man who had sold her daughter, yet Alicia needed her mother near her Friends of her own sex she had ir plenty in Frankfort, but there wa: none upon whom she could lean. Despite the feeling of repellence that she created in me I sought to ingrat- fate myself with Mrs. Warren. and talked to her of common topics in Louisville that should interest us both But I made little progress. She still regarded me with the yellow eye of suspicion. But she never showed the same aversion toward Harrison, whose mind she must have read as easily as my own and who she must also have known would resort to measures at which I stopped. have already com mented on the fact that Grey, too. seemed to trust Harrison while always w I suppose that his manner blinded them both and softened the facts, or made them look like something else.
 In the course of the day after her mothers arrival, I saw Alicia alone. When the session of the House closed went to my room to work upon some bills and about twilight I decided to take a walk as usual. On my way out passed by the small parlOr. The door was open and the sound of as sad music as I have ever heard came from it. I am peculiarly susceptible to the melancholy note in music. l like sad music and cheerful books, an aesthetic or intellectual contrast, for which I do not undertake to account.
 I stopped a moment at the door to listen to the wailing chords and then, as I caught the outline of a woman's arm, the arm of the woman who sat at the piano, I went in.
 It was Alicia playing in the dim light and expressing what was in her heart. I felt it instinctively and it did not need the sight of her sad face to con- firm me- Her eyes as she bent little over the piano seemed to me to be heavy with tears. Her face was a dead white like ivory and her hands blended with the keys.
 I think that she heard my footsteps, and I think that she knew them, but she went on with the SLOW, WdlllIlS music. What the piece was I do not know-Russian perhaps as the Rus sians seem to me to be a sad people and the room was full of shadows and ghosts and reprOaches from the past Rosemary is for remembrance, but remembrance here filled me with bitterness Not only had I destroyed my own youth, but hers as we'll and her whole life I do not claim to be a good man, the years behind me con- tained many things that I wished to forget, but whatever was and what ever I had been, I knew that I should have made a far better husband for Alicia than George Grey ever was or could be or wished to be. I should have loved her and cherished and pro- tected her and never in my basest mo- ments could I have neglected her 6s George Grey so often did, or have been cruel to her as George Grey so often was.
 The music finished, it died away in one last melancholy. wailing note that was like the echo of despair. and then a terrible thing happened. Alicia sud- denly put her face in her hands and burst into a fit of hysterical weeping. not vociferous crying like the grief or the cheap and the common, but low sobs drawn from the very bottom of her chest that shook her from head to foot:
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