Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1915-05-19


mind. When she had pushed the gold
harp into it's corner she threw herself
upon a broad sofa in a feathery drift
of chintz cushions and dropped her
forehead in her laced fingers. A gilt
framed mirror hung on the opposite
wall, out of which her sorrowful brood
ing eyes looked with an expression of
dumb and weary suffering.
Her confused thoughts raced hither
and thither. What would be the end?
Would he marry-Miss Fargo, per-
haps? The thought caused her a stab
of anguish. Yet she herself could not
marry him. The barrier was impas-
sable!
She was still lying listlessly among
the cushions when a step sounded on
the porch and she heard Chilly Lusk's
voice in the hall. With heavy hands
Shirley put into place her disheveled
hair and rose to meet him.
I'm awfully selfish to come to-
night" he said awkwardly; mo doubt
you are tired out"
She disclaimed the WEAKNESS that
dragged upon her spirits like leaden
weights, and made him welcome with
her usual cordially. She was, in fact.
relieved at his coming. At Damory
court, the night of the ball, when she
had come from the garden with her
lips thrilling from Valiant's kiss, she
had suddenly met his look. 1t had
seemed to hold a startled realization
that she had remembered with a re-
morseful conjunction. Since that
night he had not been at Rosewood.
Ranston had lighted a pine-knot in
the fireplace, and the walls were shud-
dering with crimson shadows. Her
hand was shielding her eyes, and as
she strove to fill the gaps in their
somewhat spasmodic conversation
with the trivial impersonal things that
belonged to their old intimacy, the
tiny Pickering flames seemed to be
darling unfriendly fingers plucking at
her secret. Leaning from her nest of
cushions she thrust the poker into
the glowing resinous mass till sparks
whizzed up the chimneys black nav
in torrent.
"How they fiy!" she said. "Rickey
Snyder calls it raising a blizzard in
Hades. used to think they flew up
to the sky and became the littlest
stars. What a pity we have to grow
up and learn so much! I'd rather
have kept on believing that when the
red leaves in the woods whirled about
in a circle the fairies were dancing,
and that it was the gnomes who put
the 'cockle-burs in the hounds ears"
She had been talking at random,
gradually becoming shrinkingly con-
scious of his constrained and STUN
bling manner. She had, however, but
half defined his errand when he came
to it all in burst. ~
CT can't get to it, somehow, Snir-
ley" he said with sudden desperation,
'but here it is. I've come to ask you
to marry me. Don't stop me-" he
went on hurriedly, lifting his hand:
whatever you say, l must tell you.
I've been trying to for months and
months!" Now that he had started,
it came with boyish vehemence that
both chilled and thrilled her. Even
in her own desolation, and shrinking
almost unbearably from the avowal,
the hope and brightness in his voice
touched her with pity. 1t seemed to
her that life was a strange tumble of
unacceptable and incomprehensible
pain. And all the while, in the young
voice vibrant with feeling, her cring-
ing ear was catching imagined echoes
of that other voice, graver and more
self-contained, but shaken by the same
passion, in that iteration of Il love
you! l love you!"
His answer came to him finally in
her silence, and he released her hands
which he had caught in his own. They
dropped, limp and unresponsive, in
her lap. Shirley" he said brokenly,
maybe you cant care for me-yet.
But if YOU will marry me. I-Tll be