Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1912-05-15

he rubbed them nervously against his
thumbs; his face protruded little, his
eyes narrowed.
"My name is Armstrong" he said,
determined to precipitate the issue
without further delay and flinging the
words at the other in tone of hec-
toring defiance which, however
strange to say, did not seem to effect
Newbold in any perceptible degree.
The name was an illumination to
him, though not at all in the way the
speaker had fancied; the recollection
of it was the one fact concerning her
that ranked in the solitary's mind.
He had often wanted to ask Enid Matt
land what she had meant by that
chance allusion to Armstrong which
she had made in the beginning of their
acquaintance, but he had refrained.
At first he had no right to question
her; there could be no natural end to
their affections; and latterly when
their hearts had been disclosed to each
other in the wild, tempestuous, pas
sionate scenes of the last two or three
days, he had had things Of greater mo-
ment to engage his attention, subjects
Of more Importance to discuss with
her.
He had for the time being forgotten
Armstrong and he had not before
known what jealousy was until he had
entered that room. To have seen her
with any man would have given him
acute pain, perhaps just because he
had been so long withdrawn from hui
man society, but to see her with this
man who flashed instantly into his
recollection upon the utterance Of his
name was an added evaporation.
NewbOld turned to the woman to
whom indeed he had addressed his
question in the first place, and there
was something in his movement which
bespoke a CALLING almost contemptuous
| obliviousness to the presence of the
other man which was indeed hard for
him to bear.
Hate begets hate. He was quite
conscious of Armstrong; antagonism,
which was entirely undisgUised and
open and which was growing greater
with every passing moment The
score against Newbold was running up
in the mind of his visitor.
"Ah," cooIly said the owner Of the
cabin to the first of his two guests,
IT do remember you did mention that
name the first day you spent here.
Is he IA friend of yours?"
''Not now," answered Enid Maitland.
She too was in a strange state Of
! perturbation on account of the dilem-
ma in which she found herself in
volved. She was determined not to
betray the unconscious confidence of
the dead. She hoped ferventIy that
! Newbold would not recognize Arm
strong as the man of the locket, but
if he did she was resolute that he
| should not also be recognized as the
man of the letters, at least not by her
act. Newbold was ignorant of the ex-
istenCe of those letters and she did
not intend that he should be enlight-
ened so far as she could prevent it.
| But she was keen enough to see that
| the first recognition would be in
| evitable; she even admitted the fact
that Armstrong would probably pre-
| cipitate it himself. Well, no human
soul, not even their writer, knew that
she had destroyed them, she had de-
termined to do so at the first convent
ent opportunity. Before that, however,
she intended to show them not to New
bold but to Armstrong, to disclose his
! perfdy, to convict him of the false
hood he had told her and to justify
| herself even in his eyes for the action
she had taken.
Mingled with all these quick reflec-
tions was a deadly fear. She was
! quick to perceive the hatred Arm
strong bore on the one hand because
Of the old love affair, the long cher
ished grudge breaking into sudden
life; on the other she realized that
her own failure to come to Arm
strong's hands and her love for New
bold, which she neither could nor had
any desire to conceal, and the cumula-
ton of these passionate antagonisms
would only make him the more des-
perate.
Whether Newbold found out Arm
strOng's connection with his past love,
there was sufficient proVocation in the
present to evoke all the oppugnation
and resentment Of his nature. Enid
felt as she might if the puncheons Of
the floor had been sticks of dynamite
with active detonations in every heel
that pressed them; as if the slightest
movement on the part Of any one
would bring about an explosion.
The tensity of the situation was be-
wildering to her. It had come upon
her with such startling force; the IN
expected arrival of Armstrong, of all
the men on earth the one Who ought
not to be there, and then the equally
startling arrival Of Eewbold. of whom
perhaps the same might have been
said. If Newbold had only gone on,
if he had not come back, if she had