Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1917-04-26

When l stop at a hotel / alwayi
annex lot of its paper and enve
lopes."
Yes? And what have your par
simonious habits to do with our pres
ent trouble?" queried Freneau pa
tiently.
Mulry was disguised. "Why, don'l
you see, you poor Don Juan? YOU
take these letterheads and write love
letters on them to your sick fiancee
| take them with me and mail them
from the different towns l make. Then
Miss Stafford will think you are there
Meanwhile you can go away to the
Catskills and meet your troublesome
Lois. If you can't rig up some story
to get your letters back from her and
keep her quiet until after. your mar
riage, why you're not the little bright
eyes l always took you for. See now?'
Freneau did see. He was not en-
thusiastic, but this seemed the only
possible way to tide over the present
reef in his way to the harbor of mat
rimony
Freneau was dishonorable. Freneau
was Enthusiastically an adventurer and
what the world calls cad, but he was
born of gentle people; he had good
blood in his veins, as his worldly
graces showed. He truly adored Gloria
and wanted only her. There was
sharp torment in the agonies he en-
dured fearing the loss of her through
his previous sins. His punishment was
lot far off and he was to meet IL
with neither peaceful thoughts moi
clear conscience. He had enmeshed
himself in SO complex a web of in
trigue and wrongdoing that the prob
lem of escape was ever more complex
''Who knows? If Gloria had been
a woman when he first saw her, the
woman she now was, instead of the
child then, she might have saved his
soul and his life. But he had to take
the present as the past gave it to him,
and hope for future of more straight
forward life.
Late that night in his apartment
Freneau started the batch of love let.
tiers and kilograms for Gloria. He be-
came interested in them, and so car.
ried away by the fervor he infused
into them that early dawn and his
valet found him asleep at last with
his head resting on sheets of paper
that bore such messages as:
my darling Gloria: AS l tele.
graphed you, | arrived safely, but
missed you terribly. This week Of alb
sence will seem an eternity"
This was on a letterhead of the
Hotel Ten Eyck in albany Others
were from other hotels. The last one
he had written was on the paper OF
the Fort Pitt hotel, Pittsburgh. In ii
he said:
THE eternity of this long week is
over. / return tomorrow to your
arms
He sealed the letters, wondering
what would be the answer to them
He took them to the Office, and the
next day when Mulry took his train
to Albany he carried with him these
letters. He was well pleased with the
network of lies that he and Freneau
had woven to deceive Gloria. But it
is much easier to carry out plots in
fiction than in fact.
David, Lois, and her father, Judge
Freeman, were going to the opera that
night and they stopped to see Gloria
on their way. Gloria was sitting UP
on her chaise Tongue, still pale and
somewhat weak. She submitted,
rather than invited, the in-law kiss
that Lois brushed over her cheek.
Then she turned to David and pouted:
ooh, dear, some people have all the
luck. You are going to hear Geral-
dine Farrar in Madame Butterfly
while / must lie here doing nothing.
They won't even let me read. the stin-
gy old things!" she made a moue at
her nurse. "And / do despise to be
read to. Just wait until / get out of
their clutches, I'll make up for this;
I'll be Madame Butterfly all over the
place."
David smiled at her innocence in
the allusion to Butterfly. but neither
he nor Gloria knew that Lieutenant
Pinkerton was white woolly lamb
compared to Gloria's own lover, Ere
neau.
Lois had moved away from Gloria
toward the bedside table, where
framed photograph of Freneau looked
tauntingly at her A jealous desire for
possession came over her. She longed
to take the image of the man from
Gloria as well as the man himself.
The whim became Immediately q
necessity to her. She glanced across
at the group about Gloria. No one
was looking her way. A smile curled
at the corners of her lips and a tri-
umphant CLEAN shot for a moment
into her handsome, sullen eyes as she
slipped the picture into her opera bag.
Lois was utterly maddened and des-