How Will it End

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 11102, 17 December 1897, Page 4

How Will it End

4 By BERTHA M CLAY, Author of The Burden of a Secret, Love iv a Mask The Woman Between Them, Lord Lynn's Choice, One Woman's Sin, A Broken Vow, &c. CHAPTER HYUl.— Continued. " I will never do it again," she said. ! " Dapbne, you are cross," he said. He could say what he liked, and what he wished, himself ; but if she ventured to resent it tbat was quite another thing. '* You should not bo cross ; think of tho provocation you have given me.'" But she looked at him with tho same expression one sees in the eyes of a hunted stag at bay. 11 1 shall never give you the same provocation again." •' Now you are sulky, Daphne," ho cried. " No, I have never been sulky in my life." she said. " I am very tired," he interrupted ; "do not wake me in the morning — let me ' sleep my sleep out.' " Thcro was no thought no consideration for herself — no desire that she Bhould sleep and find rept. She stood looking at him for a few minutes in silence then she said . " I wonder if you are the 3amo Philip Stowe I knew atlnglewood ?'' He rose with an impatient cry, and a muttered oath. " Do, for heaven's sake, leave ni6 alone ! Is four o'clock in the morning a proper time for making a scene ? Women never have any sense ; let this be an end of it." In a few minutes he was fast asleep and she quietly left the room, and weut back to the gloomy room where she had been for so many hours waiting for him. His words had pierced her heart, and the wotnd was bleeding ; some wives would have passed them over, thing very little of them ; but to her so tenderly loved, so cherished — thoy were like the doom of death. Was it the same Philip who has worshipped her so utterly at Inglewood the same who had carried her from home, father, friends — Arthur, and everything she held dear ; the samo who had wooed her day after day with such tender deference, such dainty grace, and poetry ; who had told her that his life hung on her love? That thilip had worshipped her, had lain his heart at her feet, had spoken to her in a voice sweet as the song of a dove — had told her she was the loveliest, tho dearest, and the best, This Philip had cold looks black, bitter, satirical words, and did not seem to love her in the least. Had marriage so changed him ? She could not understand. It seemed to her that he ought to love her so much the better since she had given up everything on earth for him. At she stood watching through the narrow street how the crimson and golden gleam rose in the sky, she thought of that one evening in the old- fashioned garden at home when the two rivals had met ; she remembered Philip's passionate devotion to her and her whole heart was filled with wonder as it was filled with pain. " I have no room for you in my life," he had said. Wa3 it true ? Oould it be true ? Had he wooed and won her with such passionate love, only to find out that she was a burden, a dead weight to him ? How it could be, in her loving simplicity she could not understand ; he had told her that a beautifal wife would help him so much and now he seem?d ashamed of her, so would never go out with her. She remembered how be had said to her, " I wish I could v have you with mo always, Daphhe, to talk over my plots." JNow she was always with him, and be could not onduro tbat she should disturb him in his writing-room. " lie used to thiuk me beautiful," she said to herself ; " have I lost my beautiful 7" But tbe keenest pain of all was the crushed sweet lily. She knew by instinct that some fair woman bad carried that in her hair or in her bosom; who could it be, and why should he care for it so tenderly ? A vision came to her of the dear old father sitting under the boughs of the apple treos, and, bending down, she wept bitter tears. Most young wives have wept such tears, but very few with as much cause. (to be continued).