The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-28

ing taper casting fltful and deceptive gleams into useless rubbish heaps. The knoweldge filled her loyal, great young soul with a great pity, an almost sa- cred pity for the man who had spent his life in such earnest labor to ac- complish a giants work for religion and faith and whose results were even less than those of an ant.
 Mr. Casaubon was so withered as to heart that he might have broken the heart of his beautiful young wife and never known it. But he knew instant ly when she pitied him, though she thought she had kept 1t hidden. He 1 knew it, because the new accent in her speech put into distinct syllables in his | mind certain confused murmurs that he had heard in his cramped brain ever since their wedding tourney. He | had begun to doubt himself. His | notes had begun to overwhelm him. Ma turally he felt keenly that this young, ignorant cerature was both presumtu- ous and unjust.
 Dorothea had achieved her desired condition of martyr, but it was a very little and petty one, Dutifully she helped MT. Casaubon make notes on | notes and transfer those notes into | more notes and gather still more notes for that great book of which never a line was being written.
 Another annoyance added itself to MT. Casaubons troubles. His cousin. Will Ladislaw, appeared on the scene. | Young Ladislaw was poor. All the money in the family had gone to Casaubon, and Will merely had inherited | the only good looks there had ever been. He got them from his grand mother, who had been Casaubon s aunt. She should have come into a great part of the Casaubon fortune, but she married against her family's | wishes and was cut off.
 1 She and her husband had died abroad in want. Their son married as un- wisely as they had done. His wife was | the daughter of a gentleman who did gentlemanly banking in the West End | but really made all his money by oper- l ating a high-class pawnbroking es- tablishment, under another name in another part of London. One day the l daughter, Sarah, discovered that fact and learned at the same time that the pawn broking was only a cloak for re- 1 ceiving stolen goods. Without a word she fled from her home, and, later, married Ladislaw.
 | Neither Will nor any one known to Will
 was acquainted with the story of his ! mothers life. It was known only that she had run away. After their death Will received an allowance from MT. Cassau-
 bon. which that gentleman paid as a mat ter of justice, but with the austerity and coldness that makes justice an inf1iction l and an offense.
 Wilr had studied in Heidelberg and
 was playing at art Not being adept at
 humbug. he knew that he was not des-
 tined to become a great painter, and was
 seeking for his true field. This looseness
 of mind shocked MT. Casaubon. His fri
 tation was increased by the feeling that
 Will felt merrily contemptuous of his own
 vast labors on the great key to all my
 thologies.
 MT. Casaubon was a person too supe-
 rior to ordinary weaknesses to feel such
 thing as Jealousy, of course. Therefore
 when he saw his radiant young cousin oi
 the fine gray eyes and the shining hail
 spending much of his time with Dorothea
 he attributed his violent annoyance to his
 dislike of Wills character.
 He decided that Will must go abroad
 again, but his power to insist on thai
 was broken in a very simple way. Soor
 after Will had first seen Dorothea he in
 formed MT. Casaubon that he would not
 trouble him any longer for an incoms
 because he felt that he should depend or
 himself.
 He was quite honest in this, as, indeed
 he had childlike honesty in everything
 He was ingeniously elated over his free dom. and he did not realize how muci
 more he bad chafed under the grudginl