HER ROMANCE.

Otago Witness, Volume 23, Issue 2684, 23 August 1905, Page 82

HER ROMANCE.

There was not the faintest suggestion of the "old maid" about her. It was always a shock to strangers to hear that she wasn't married, a widow at least, and all the servants addressed her as "madame." She was tall, with a full, straight figure, elegantly clothed, a soft pink mouth with | plenty of very white teeth, grey, intelli- ! gent eyes with lurking humour in the lids, and wavy hair, a little grey about the temples. Her colour was high and natural. She was so popular that she had to steal the time to attend to her own concerns. Young girls told her all their complicated affairs of the heart, and the flannelled young men asked her advice, and said to one another that they could tell she had been, a "corker" in her youth, and had turned down many a good chap. It was a sham*. She was just the kind of woman that a man would want his wife to be when she got to be that age, and the kind of mother that a fellow could be proud "of. Some soft-spoken, sympathetic girl always told them: how it happened that Miss Marsh was still Miss Marsh. -- - - "Don't 1 you know?" she would say, with real tears' in her eyes. "Her lover was killed in the. war. It is so sad. She is one of the really faithful, devoted women. She has never looked at a man since.". "By Jove!" the young chap would say, "I was about to propose to t;er myself — if he were frivolous or wanted to hide his emotion. Sometimes he would b© really disappointed. One young chap sent for his father, who had long been a widower, in the hope that he might make a match ; but, of course, it was all oft' when lid heard the story. It was always the same story, but there were" several versiois. - • j "She was about .to be married," some of them had it ; "and while her iover was on his way to her the train ran off the track and killed him. It is a sad story, for she never recovered from the shock." Or a gay girl would stop and look indignant and say : "Miss Marsh ? Ah, there's a story ! She is on© of the noble women. She discovered that her lover loved another, and she gave him up to her, but she has never been able to love again. It is a sad, sad life she lives." j There were others, but these were the most popular. It was October when Mr Timothy Parker came to Virginia Beach, where the Southern crowd still lingered. He was a very practical New York business man, who had never married, he cheerfuliy declared, because he had seen but \ two women he wanted to marry, and they both had husbands. When he met . Miss- Marsh he set about courting her in short order, as he did most things. But, | like all the rest, he asked, "Why?" Nobody couXd get away from that "Why?" And he heard all the stories. Mr Parker lay awake for several nights and thought over his_ unworthiness, which was very good for him. Of course, as matches went, he knew that he was a very suitable one, but what had he to offer in exchange for a romance? There was nothing romantic about him, but he had a sturdy self-respect, if he- was 47. He was healthy and happy,- with a sense of humour and a good temper, and he decided at last that a dead man was dead. To his amazement, he discovered that ' the preliminaries of courting the lady of | his affectionate admiration were not , nearly so difficult as he had anticipated. She was cordial, almost as much so us to the boys who flocked about her and told their love stories. Parker made up his mind that he would begin by getting her to confide in him. He would leap up to the romance a.nd make her tell it to him, and then he would assure her that her heart-story should never be disturbed if she married him ; that he respected memories, but that it was her duty to try and live in the real world again. One brilliant day they went for a walk up the beach. The air had almost a j toiich of frost, and sea and sky were j a-sparkle with blue, and the sand was firm to the feet from the autumn tides. Parker tried to lead tip to his subject. "To you Southern people the war was a terrible thing." '"Why?" she said, in a surprised way. "I think that it was a very good thing in many ways. It united the country." j "The war with Spain — yes," Mr Parker I went on hastily. "I was speaking of the war of the RejDdlion." I "I hardly know. You see, my father was a Northern man who couldn't go to war against my mother's people, because ,

it would have made -her unhappy, so air the "first hint of "trouble they went to London, and I was born there." Parker mentally kicked himself. Like many other people, he had come to think of "the war" as something that had no> date, but a thing that explained everything in ths South that needed explanation. Of course, she was not more thafl thirty-seven or eight. It must have been the railway accident. He flattered himself that he could follow on. "Death by battle is not the most terrible thing. When our heroes fall, we can think of them dying gloriously for their country. It is when they are takeqi from us by accident that we are unreconi ciled. It seems so imnecessary." Mn* Parker was affected by his own words* There was so much of a tremble in his voice that Miss Marsh turned her head and looked at him with sympathy. "That must be a heart-breaking experience," she said. "All of my friends seem to die of old age. I have never had any terrible shock of that sort." Mr Parker recovered from his grief and took another tack, but he held manfully to the current- that was leading him on. "Death is not all," he said, gloomily. "Sometimes we lose those who are dear to us through treachery. We find thaf> we have been deceived by those we trusted the most. Sometimes we nobly give up those we love, from a sense of duty." Here Mr Parker met Miss Marsh's humorous grey eyes, and he winced. There was no suggestion of a smile on her face, but those tented eyelids niade him feel as though he had been, talking like a cub of a boy. "I am awfully afraid I am not verysentimental," she said. "I am not very ready to .trust people unless I know something about them ; and I am not at all sure that I should think I was giving up anyone who did not want to be held. Love isn't to my mind like that." "Do you" — he was taking the plunge now — "think you could love anybody i" "Why not'/" "Me?" She smiled very sweetly at Mr Park-.r, and he stopped and kissed her. On the way home he was suddenly taken with a retrospective jealousy. Hq wondered what the romance really was. "Why haven't you ever married? How is it that you were free for me?" "Why did I never marry?' she repeated. "Because you are the- first nan who ever asked me." — John Drexel Turner in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.