Evening star., 1912-10-06

who had hobo witt large on lace ana gar
ments 81 couldn't see her pretty phiz, bless
her little heart; but I'd swear to her walk
an style among a thousand. Now, what's
she aftero What's she doin' here? The
papers sad-but curse the papers: they
mostly tell lies! Joe, me boy, you believe
your own eyes, an p'raps, if you're lucky,
your ears.
And with that he followed his quarry,
stalking her with wary skill born of the
woodland and the wild.
CHAPTER TX. Husband and Wife
nORIS WAVERTON halted at the edge
- of the wood, and gaZed wistfully across
the smooth plateau of the park at the Old
World front of the house that Claude Wa
vertons father had built with treasure ex-
tracted from the mountains of Colorado.
Lights were shining dmly in some of the
windows; but the house stood out boldly
from its background of tall trees, and the
gir-wife's eyes filled with tears as she looked
at the mansion that had witnessed her home
coming as happy bride, in which her child
was born, and where her dream of welded
bliss had been converted into long agony
of utter wretchedneSS.
All during that pause, in the peace and
solitude of the stately park, doubt, mis-
giving, which had peeped UP in her secret
soul at a certain mOmentous interview IN the
lawyers Office and had troubled her actively
since letter from her husband came to hand
few hours ago, grew into sort OF unnerv-
ing obsesslon.
Could the man who had written that letter
have been so utterly vile and contemplate
as her imagination had painted him? Had
she striven honestly and with single mind
edness, to reclaim him when they began to
drift apart? Had she not been too ready to
shrink from him with loathing when he
lurched into her presence and outraged her
delicacv with coarse jibes and crudely hate
full innuendos?
Poor girl! In the days of expanding maiden
hood she had regarded marriage as the crown
and desire of life, and it had proved to be
little more than sordid bondage slavery
of convention hard and cruel as the yoke of
servitude in some Arab-ridden village of
mid Africa Nevertheless, the influence of
early training was stubborn. 1t had not
been wholly obliterated even by her tears,
and the sprig of hope and faith that took
root in her heart when she learned that her
scamp of husband had saved little Kath-
leen S life grew into vigorous plant with the
reading of the letter sent to her at Nara
gansett Pier.
Studiously moderate and impersonal in
tone, it had warned her against the insidious
arts of John Stratton Tearle. 1t pretended
to be dictated only by regard for her future
we'll being; but what woman would fail to
discover in every line a passionate longing
and regret inspired by herself' Certainly it
was cold, almost austere, III tone. But there,
again, her womans heart argued that pride
restrained her husband from revealing his
true intent. For that was the saddest fea-
ture of all her suffering. Despite the solemn
pronouncement of the law, she still regarded
Claude Waverton as her husband and
Tearle had blundered badly in thinking that
her tortured soul would seek consolation in
a second matrimonial venture, save under
the last and worst indignity of marriage
between Waverton and Mrs. Delamar.
The letter, it was true, forbade her en-
phatically either to write or to endeavor to
seek an interview with zone who has gone
out of your life forever; but, beneath
somewhat frigid manner, poor Doris was es-
sentially feminine and impusive,- "a glowing
little volcano of love and passion coated with
the ice of reserve, and shrouded, perhaps,
under thin veil of Puritanism.
And finally there Kathleen, that en-
gaging mite who would soon be asking why,
if other girls had fathers, she had none!
So, after dispute with Mrs. Daunt that
approached perilously near rupture be-