The Carlisle independent., 1915-04-29
CHAPTER X.
Of a Music.Master.

A month passed. Yvonne held the destiny of three persons in her hand. They were like figures on chess board and she moved them with the sureness, the unerring instinct of any skilled disciple of the philosophers game They were puppets; she ranged them about her stage in swift changing pictures and applauded her own effectiveness. There were no re- hearsals. The play was going on all the time, whether tragedy, comedy or chess
 Of the three, Lydia alone faced the situation with courage. She was young, she was good she was inexperienced, but she saw what was going on be- meath the surface with a clarity of vision that would have surprised an older and more practiced person; and, seeing, was favored with the strength to endure pain that otherwise would have been unsupportable. She knew that Frederic was infatuated. She did not try to hide the truth from herself. The boy she loved was slipping away
 
 feet back in the old path from which he blindly strayed. Her womans heart told her that it was not love he felt for Yvonne. The strange mentor that guides her sex out of the igno- rance of youth into an understanding of hitherto unpresented questions re- vealed to her the nature of his feeling for this woman. He would come back to her in time she knew, chastened; the same instinct that revealed his frailties to her also defended his sense of honor The unthinkable could never happen!
 She judged Yvonne too in a spirit of fairness that was amazing when one considers the lack of perspective that must have been hers to contend with. Lydia could not think of her as evil, immoral, base. This beautiful, warm hearted, clear-eyed woman suggested nothing of the kind to her. It pleased her to play with the good-looking young fellow, and she made no pre- tense of secrecy about it. Lydia was charitable to the extent of blaming her only for an utter lack of conscience in allowing the perfectly obvious to hap pen so far as he was concerned. For her own qualification she was calmly inviting a tragedy which was likely to crush him without even so much as disturbing her peace of mind for an in- stant after all was said and done. There was poison in the cup she hand ed out to him, and knowing this be- yond dispute she allowed him to drink while she looked on and smiled. Lydia hated her for the pain she was storing up for Frederic, far more than she hated her for the anguish she, herself, was made to endure.
 Her mother saw the suffering in the girls eyes, but saw also the proud spirit that would have resented sym pathy from one even so close as she. Down in the heart of that quiet re- served mother smoldered hatred for Yvonne Brood that would have stopped at nothing had it been in her power to inf1ict punishment for the wrong that was being done. She too saw tragedy ahead. but her vision was broader than Lydias. It included the figure of James Brood
 Lydia worked steadily, almost dog gedly at the task she had undertaken to complete for the elder Brood Every afternoon found her seated at the table in the study, opposite the stern-faeed man who labored with her over the seemingly endless story of his life. Something told her that there were secret chapters which she was not to write She wrote those that were to endure; the others were to die with him.
 He watched her as she wrote, and his eyes were often hard. He saw the growing haggardness in her gentle, girlish face; the wistful, ruzzled ex- pression in her dark eyes. A note of tenderness crept into his voice and re- mained there through all the hours they spent together. The old-time brusqueness disappeared from his speech; the sharp authoritative tone was gone He watched her with pity in his heart, for he knew it was or dained that one day he too was to hurt this loyal pure-hearted creature even as the others were wounding her now.
 He frequently went out of his way to perform quaint little acts of cour- tesy and kindness that would have surprised him only a short time be- fore. He sent theater and opera tickets to Lydia and her mother. He placed bouquets of flowers at the girls end of the table. obviously for her alone. He sent her home-just around the corner