CHAPTER VIII. " A LOST LOVE."

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 183, 18 December 1886, Page 11

CHAPTER VIII. " A LOST LOVE."

It was a June atternoon, and a crowd of sight-seers surged in and out tho famous palace of Louvre. Among them, alone, went a sweet, youthful figuro, followed by curious and admiring glances as she passed along, solely intent on tho art treasures about her. Violet, dressed from her unlimited trousseau by the skilled and devoted Kate, was always a triumph of becoming costume. This day sho was in broiue brown, from the crown of her hat to the toe of her little bronze boots. Her dress was a rich brown eilk with golden lights, her parasol of lace to match ; on hat, corsage, and parasol-handle were bunches of golden buttercups, and in this gold and brown, a3 if copied from a dainty Hesperian butterfly, sho flitted along from picture to picture, remitted entirely to herself. Finally sho cnrne to tho placo eho liked the beat, tho temple-lik© rotunda, lit from above, and lined with deep crimson, where alone in all her matchle&s beauty stands the " conquering Venus " of the Louvre. Violet sat on the sofa placed at a little distance in the front of the figuro, and her eyes sought the triumphant face, tho form so strong, so gracious, so dignified, yefc all tenderness and enchantment. This, then, «aa the power of beauty. Women like this, vigorous, self-poised, grandly moulded — these were the women to be loved. But women like herself, shy and slender, yielding, longing for strong arms and strong heads to eustain them, thefco were the women that men deceived or forgot. She had grown up, overshadowed by her own great fortune, and men forgot her in her fortune. The palace of the Louvre, with its treasure-filled corridor 3 and galleries, diod away from her consciousness. Sho went back to the dawn of her girlhood — to her Lincolnshire home, when at fifteen she lived there with her stern old grandmother, her elderly romance-ropress-ing governess, and her maid. How sedulously all poetry, romance, novels had been shut out of her young life — sho had been reared among all those oldeily people as a young vestal. Acd yet, there romance and new-born passion, tho dawn cf heart-life, had come to her ; lovo had risen as a new day that daw ns rosily in the east, and widens all &CVO33 the land, and love had paled, and perched, as when thick mieta enwrap and veil that new-born day. Kevor since the first period of thafc love nnd loss had Violet recalled so clearly those houra in Lincolnshire, as this day, sitting alone before the Venus of the Louvre. Marriage, with it 3 trembling hopes, its bitter, crushing disappointments, had sharpened all her perceptions and intensified her emotions. That terrible, yet often blessed capacity for loving, which Lady Burton .said was herp, was awako now in iull force, and, alas ! had in her husband no object. xso wretch drifting shipwrecked on desolate seas, no trembler on the limit of a precipice, no victim of fell difcoaee, quivering on the verge of death, was that hour in more instant or terrible peiil than wag Violet, Countess of Leigh, sitting in the palace of the Louvre, and dutifully watched, from a distance, by a maid and groom. Her peril was from her own heart. She saw the dark bird-haunted ferncarpeted wood, stretching along the grange Wandering there alone one laughing summer day, herself fair as a young Hebe, she had come upon a beautiful Antinous sleeping in the wood. She had almost trodden on him as he lay asleep, his hands under his comely head, his curls damp with I the dews of slumber, his throat stirred by each deep, healthy inspiration, as he lay in a bed of aromatic fern. Sho had stopped, held her breath, and gazed as one spellbound by the beauty of a young god. Awe at first of a strange presence. Then, grown more familiar, curio3ity. What colour were his eyes ? What would be the tones of his voice ? She was young, and she had own rank, near her age, certainly almost none of what her grandmother deemed a dangerous ccx. And she haji looked and wondered, until the exuberant child-spirit mastered her ; for childhood had hardly as yet yielded its place to girlhood in her soul, and, intent on mischief, leaning forward, with a long spray of grass, eoftly pulled from among the fern, eho had

touched the sleeper's lips. Then h'^ eyes had opened, eyes like heaven's own b ue. The acquaintance, begun in mischief and merrimont, passed quickly into love. Like two happy children, Violet and the young Oxonian wandered in the woods, and by the summer stroamß, and for six weeks wore entiroly happy in each other's eociety. Kate Gray. Violet's maid, had a young woraau's sympathy for a pair of beautiful young lovers. »vnd ahe felt groat pity for the topressed and lonely life of her dear little tnistrcsi. Kate mas present at all tho meetings, a conveniont third, doaf to all soft words of j lovo, and blind to oach stolen caress. Kate carried the numerous letters that were a noce c .sity, oven though the lovers met twice each day. Jiut tho hour came when the young studont mu?t go back to his studies. With toars and lingering embraces tho youthful pair parted, promising da.ily lettors and undying faithfulness. They parted, and utter silenco fell between them. Since that hour Violet had neither seen nor hoard of her handsome adorer. He had been false ; she said that he had seen in her only the eimplo little Lincolnshire girl, and had amused himeelf, and then forgotten her. As the young and lonely bride recalled 1 all these bitter-aweet experiences, her brown oyos fell from the marblo Venus, and were fustoued droamily on the floor. Presently she gare that start which so often comes to the object of fixed attention. She sprang up feeling that she had been for hours, ytis, for ages, on that sofa in the rotunda. Turning, she lifted her gaze, and her eyes mot once again those same dark-blue ardent eyes which had met hers in the Lincolnshire woods. The lover of her girlhood was bofore her once more ! One instant a deadly pallor spread over her face, her parasol fell from her hand, and she caught at the back of the sofa for support. Then, as with an exclamation, the young man sprang forward and stooped for tho ivory and BiTken toy which she had dropped, the blood surged over her throat and face, and she felt a& if he had not only been matching her, but had read her thoughts —read all those tender reminisconces ol him — the traitor. Where was her pride? Could she show! that sho had remembered, while ho had for- i gotten ? Nevet ! never ! i He held out the parasol, and also his right hand to clasp hers. He cried : "Violet i" She took the parasol, but ignored the other extended hand. " Thanks," phe said, as to a stranger. Then suddenly a group of bustling sightseers crowded into the rotunda with exclamations and questions, and Violet and her love of other days fell apart. With trembling, impetuous steps, which she longea to render firm and dignified, Violet hastened along the gallery to her waiting servants and then to her carriage. Surely this was the irony of fate— that she should meet him again just as she had learned that love was living for him yet — that ahe should meet him when love would be a crime, and therefore an impossibility. " But it ia better so," said Violet to herself. "If he had found me three months ago, he too, ho, too, might have courted me for my money, and won me by deceit ; and to be deceived by him would surely be the most bitter thing on earth." Roeeiving no orders, the coachman drove slowly along the Bois de Bologne, but all during the dri^e, and at the opera that evening, Violet wna striving to find a grave wide and deep enough in her heart to bury her lost lrve. The next afternoon the Montressor barouche was drawn up at the Hotel Splendide, waiting for the Countesa of Leigh to join her Aunt Montressor and Lady Clare. Under the arcade, a few paces from the carriage, stood a handsome, young man, looking idly about. Lord Leigh, turning from the carriag-stepa saw him, and went to him with extended hands." " Well met, Keith. Glad to see you again." Keith was just returning this greeting when Violet came down the hotel step pieceded by a footman carrying her parasol and wrap, and followed by her maid holding her mistress's little gold-mounted caba. Violet took her place beside the Ccuntess Montreseor, heraunt,and, engaged by her greetings, caw neither Lord Keith nor her husband. '•There is Misa Violet Ainslie," cried Lord Keith j " what a surprise to find her in Paris. I wonder where she is staying?" " Acquainted?" " Long ago. She waa then the most captivating child, as now she has bloomed into the loveliest of women " " I think I can accommodate you with her address, " said Lord Leigh. " Suite 47, thie hotel." "Oh, thanks. Staying with the Montrepsors ? I will call " Lord Leigh laughed, but gave no explanation.