FOR HONOUR'S SAKE

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12910, 26 February 1906, Page 2

FOR HONOUR'S SAKE

(By Berth* M. Clay.)

CHAPTER XIII.—"YOU KNOW THE J PENALTY. - ' 2 The day following Lady Ailister's ball, 1 Captain Stewart ana his wife did not meet until dinner time., and then there were ' other people present, so she kid no chance 1 to broach the subject that was uppermost in her mind; but in the drawing room j afterward, she contrived to draw Bear to him, as he stood a little apart. « Bending over some music to select a song, she said, carelessly: "So that was Chris Davsnant who was 1 talking to you last night?" • Stewart let his eyes rest with a quiet, ' half-contemptuous glance C on the lovely, face, and answered, brieuv: ' "Yes." , "Why didn'tryou introduce him to me?" continued Pauline. J "There was no necessity, ust- then. Another time will do," said lie, rather coldly. "You might ask him here to dinner," ; she said, taking up a, song. : " I don't care for the Davenants to have ' a footing" in my house," - said Stewart, ' quietly. \ "No?" She lilted her blue eyes now, : with an innocent stare. " But they are ! in society." "So are a good many one does not wish to cultivate." Just then a gentleman came up eacerly ; to Pauline begging for a song. oiid she : was obliged to relinquish her waiTsrc Stewart turned away, cuinpresving his teeth. The contest voald Lave t:> c me, and he did not care uuw vk.k. Pauline, he knew, had been inquiring all about the Davenants, was perfectly aware that Claude Verner was the woman her husband loved, and intended to make an effort at interference with his freedom of action. He could have laughed at such folly but that it was all so heartrending. But for Claude's sake, even more than tr.s own, he must crush with a ruthless baud any such attempt on his wife's part. He would see Claude as often as he chose, and he would not suffer her to be insulted by so much as a lock. And the contest came the nest day. About twelve o'clock Stewart 'entered the drawing room to get a letter which he had left there the previous night. Pauline was sitting by a small table, arranging some flowers in a bowl: it was a pretty occupation, which was the reason for it, not the love of flowers. "Good morning." Stewart s~:d—he had not seen her befoie—and was turning toward the door again when his wife's voice arrested him. " Esric!" she said, and he paused, and came back a few steps. Something in her tone startled him. and made him draw in his brer.th si'ently. Let the struggle cune and oe over: but it would be torture to him. ( oarser l.atures have always this empire over the nobler natures, that they can inflict pain, and are proof against any retaliation. Pauline glanced at her husband, as he stood near the piano, resting his hand lightly upon it; but she could make nothing of his face, which generally, in repose, was stern turd grave ; ail her cunning, ail her stratagem and diplomacy were but sorry tactics t-> him—he saw through them at or.ee ; be; she could never begin to understand h:m. How could she? "I waiit to go to the theatre t«.-night," she said, building up a toppling rose. '" I have no other engagement." "Very well. Which theatre? As I am going out I will get a box for you, if there is one to he had." "I don't much care. H'm ■ tbe H;>ymarket will do; I haven't seen the new piece. Yen will come, too.'"' . "I am sorry: hut I have an engagement this ever.iug." "Can't you put it off?" said Pauline, pouting.. "You hardly ever go out with me." ' " I go cut with you enough to save appearances:. more than that, I imagine, we, neither of us desire." " But I do desire it now."' said she. " We ought to be seen cut together more often." ■• -Captain Stewart smiled. "Don't you think it's rather late in the day to arrive at that ( view of the case?" he asked, carelessly. :" Xo, I thiak it's time -enough," said j she. rnvi-iiig round, and dropping her hands j in her lap. " I suppose you won't go ! with me this evening because yon are gciug i io tail <■ n rhe-e Davenants?" ; Just a il.isi:—a dangerous Hash—hi the j mans dark '-Ye-., hue nor a change of j colour. H« said, with a slight laugh : J "1 am nor in the habit of accounting I to you, Paulino, or ar.yune else, -for my j cosr.ifigs and ;M.::;g*. When 1 tell ycu j that 1 cannot you this evening, i there is nothing nunc to be said;" ! tic moved t:;iva:'ds the door, as if the ! subject were closed. when Pauline sprang j to her feet. '! "There is mere to be said,"' she exi claimed, her vi-i.-e harsh with anger: "a j great deal more. Y'.-ti '..ever told me who j that girl was you hived, but I kne-vr now—- | it's Claud; Yet net " I Stewart ruined back, his face white as death, went straight up to his wife, and . grasping her wrists, with a gup of iron, forced her back into the chair fioiu which she had risen. " Go on." he said, in a strange sup- • pressed way; " let there be a beginning' and end of this at once." The force of his passion crushed her j like a, physical foice; though he pur out ] but- a minimum of actual strength. She i cowered, and trembled, and looked up at • him, panting, and half imploring, half de- ! riant, like a baffled auimal that would, if I it dared, attack its conqueror. ,| "Let me go!" she muttered; "ycu 1 frighten me." ; "Ycu are- i:ot frightened: only cowed I and angry. I am in r:o mood for trifling. ! Pauline, and yon sh.t'i not move from here i until this matter has been settled between j us, once and fir ::!'.'" Tie released her . hands, and drew back. " Now." he said. "what have you to say to me?" ! Pauline looked d.'wn ar ho; wis'--, v.i.i.-h . bf.re but .liudiil.v iho Viijcos-: of his hands; ' then up into her !:ru<bv. d's sifvn. handsome ; fnc". and all the malice rif he- lyjrure . slit-red m bor h'-.? -.-,. ' "I have iu say this,' »ae said, em-

phatically, "that what-ever faults 1 may have, I have always been true to you; and I won't tolerate any rival. lam not concerned with her name; sue can look after that, I suppose, if you can't; but lam concerned with my own cam*. lam your wife; nothing cars undo that." She paused. " Go on," Stewart said, with a quietness that a far more stupid woman than Pauline would never have mistaken for calmness. She glanced up at him tieeticgiy; but after all he would never treat her roughly; let her goad him to the uttermost, he was a gentleman to the core, and could not forget her womanhood. She said, with the kind of boldness that - belongs to a measure of fear: "Of course, I can't interfere with your movements, but you cannot prevent mo from—using—other means in my own selfdefence." J . "' ' "Xo? Now, Pauline, hear me." said her husband, in that same suppressed tone and manner which only shows the mastery, not the absence, of passions that, let loose, consume or destroy. " You do well to say that you cannot interfere with me; you can scarcely be mad enough to imagine that, considering our relations to each other, and the very conditions of cur marriage, I should, for an instant, hold myself responsible to you for any action of mine. You, yourself—my wife in name, but in nothing else—have not by one act, word, or even look, helped to keep me from utter moral ruin; I owe it to the love of which you dare to be jealous not to you, that I am not what you would have made me. But you. forsooth! will tolerate no rival!—you will cross my will, not by any attempt to coerce me—but by the coward woman's weapon of slander, innuendo, anonymous letters maybe; or ever. percosial appeal to Miss Verner, of whom I warn you to speak, in my hearing, with respect. You think that hi such warfare as this lam powerless; and so I am, if you are willing to accept the penalty or striking at me through Claude Verner."

He came close up to her now. and put liis two hands on her shoulders—she had risen to her feet while he spoke.

""Let her name." he said, "be shamefully linked with mine; let any insult, direct or indirect, be levelled against her; let a slight be put upon her by you. in look, word or deed; let her receive one stab, however secretly given, because of me, and I shall know at whose door to lay the wrong. I shall ask no questions of you, to be answered with lies, but I will hurl you down from the high place you hold, and leave you the dubTcus place of a woman who is neither wife nor widow—a woman separated from her husband. N«w," dropping his hands firm her shoulders, as with a smothered cry she sank into the chair again, "ycu know the penalty—incur it if ycu dare." "You cannot:" Pauline gasped. "It would injure* - your own honour!" " Cannot!'' Stewart said, hoarsely: he was shaken to the soul. "Do you fciow me still so little? You have roused in me a demon that will not spare your wry womanhood if you brave me! Watch yourself that you keep your own counsel. cr. by Heaven, you shall bite the dust'.'" Once nn.re he turned to the tb-or, and this time Pauline did not attempt to s«op| him. Like most shallow people, she was quite unable to gauge the depth and force of passions with which she had no affinity, and she had, in her folly, acted, like a man who should, alone and unaided, iling himself onto a battalion of armed men. She was swept down, and left crushed, terrified, bewildered, with, through all. a maddening sense of her own fatuous blindness in failing to compieher.d the strength of her foe. She had attacked him openly, and enabled him to grapple with and d:sann her. .She ought to have wailed and watched, and used, as opportunity presented itself, those " woman's weapons" which she had threatened to employ. Had she been wiser, her husband would hav*had no just ground for accusing her of slander and innuendo: now she might be made to suffer for sins not her own. "He would " ask no questions." but condemn her unheard. Long after Iter husband had left her. Pauline wiithcd in the mental to:tare ot a mean, jealous spirit, that feels ji.-elf baffled, and feels the added sting of knowing itself undone by it* own folly, impotent wvath of malic*-, atid the jealousy, not of Jove, but vanity. .But. she asked, lierseif. -.vhen she had grown a H'tic calmer, though she still quailed befoie the memory ot" her husband's parting worths, and the look and tone that accompanied then:, was she indeed impotent ? Was there no way by which she could make Claude Verner feel the knife. in spite of her lover's tln-ats?

"Theie must be means." she said, sotting her teeth. " I have made a false step, but 1 will retrieve it. I will call on the Davenants: Ksric cannot, for the ghTs sake, he is so careful of her name, oppose that: I shall see then how the land

lies, and if the girl wants to keep her name untainted, there will be s'-nie me;ins of letting her know that she is giving it away to the world to piny with, i: she lets such a man as Captain Stewart, who isn't ::: love with his wife, see u-.» much of her. I'll net forget one won! yon spoke ti. me today. Ksric. If a cumipled roseieaf touches Claudv Verner you will hurl me down from my place, make me 'bite the dust!" 1 shall not forget. It is not my way to forget—or forgive '." But at luncheon she was fair, smiling, well-bred, making herself agvevable to three or four people wlm were present, among them a young adoier who couldn't understand why Captain Stewait didn't worship his lovely wife. Bat had the

young adorer been married cnly three mouths to Pauline, he would luivc .-npiprehended how very different the same i>b-j-sct may appear according n* you view it fmm one point or another. A panther, viewed from the outside of the cage, looks sleek and soft, with its velvet coat and graceful movement.--, hut if you were inside tlu case you miirht be unpleasantly reminded of other nttiihul-'s. calculated to discount the panther's he«u;y. CHAPTER XIV.—XO XRAR. AXD YKT FAR APAKT. If Captain Stewart had ucc'cd an incentive to se-:-k ■■: meeting with Claude Ve'i":r that eveninc. the soon? with his wile ill ika- iuuiiilug wcaU Jiuvc aupinieil

it. It left him with the shattered feeliog inevitable to a nature such as bis. strong, passionate, and sensitive, the more deeply stirred by great emotions because incapable of sm.ul t-ne-s; and this had touched him s& keenly, all the chords of his soul were set jarring; theie was no soothing nor help, save in Claude's piese&cc This desperate pain was a kisd of mad* nexs that mii<ie him tremble for his own power of self-command when he should stand face to face with the woman ha loved; yet did not for that make him, even in thought, draw back. He must see Claude, hold her band in his. hear her voice, look into her dark eye* —U»-night, to-night—he could scarcely wait even. 50 long. Oh.* for one hour of bless-ed oblivion ! to forget the fetters that bound him, and believe himself free! He felt sometimes, he felt to-day, as if he dared not face the futnte.

How- he passed tlie intervening hums be hardiy knew: he went to the club, met frienas. talked with them, transacted xome business at the Horse Guards, remembered even, with the military habit of exactitude to call at a shop about sonic music he had promised to select- and have srent to a laay; ar.d he was through all. outwardly, the must self-possessed man of the world, his brain was clear for the business, he had to do; yet his real self had no part in anything that he said or did ; he was counting almost th* minutes, hi* heart was throbbing with the longing to again see the woman he loved.

When the time came at Sa*t, and he went home to dress, he did cot meet his wife, or evtn know whether she \w out or not; but wiien he left the house he saw the carriage watting at the floor. He was not curious to ic|uirc wiicte Pauline was ging: he costhi !'uHy t:usl hei—not becausr she was goad, but because she was too heartless to be tempted. ;;nd too prudent to seek tevengc <»n him by appearing to be less than i: itpuiachable: the strongest fseiir.g of which she was capable would never be strong "enough u~> blind her to her »>vn self-interest. (To be continued.)