" PAROLE D'HONNEUR," OR A LIFELONG BLUNDER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1798, 2 December 1873, Page 3

" PAROLE D'HONNEUR," OR A LIFELONG BLUNDER.

-♦ (From the Argosy.") (Concluded.) Two hours later, when the moon had risen and was flooding solemn hills, and purple heath, and silver loch w-ith lucent brightness, Lady Lundie slipped upstairs from. the draw-ing-room, where she h=id been talking with imgald, to Joanna's chamber. Sincthemomentwhen shehad stood on the stone terrace, holding up her white dress iv one hand, Joanna had not been in the sittingroom. She had gone to her bedroom at o.ce ou returning to the house, and there her friend found her. The wide window was thrown open to the soft night air when Lady Lundie entered the apartment, and the flood of moonlight streamed in upon a prostrate figure lying upon the fbor in a buth of radiance as it were — a white figure with hidden face and thickly falling hair. L >dy Lundie knelt down at its side. " Joanna," sh • said, in a strangely tender voice, " Joanna !" It seemed as if it was by a mutual yet silor.t consent that she took her position, and the hidden face was with one quiet, swift movement hidden on her lap. It was so like Joanna Forsythe, that swift, speechful change of posture " And so," said Lady Lundie, breaking the silence which ruled both for a few moments ; " and so Dugald must go away to-morrow." " Yes," answered Joanna, « if he thinks it best." Another pause, in which the older woman twisted abmt her finger a thick tress of the brown hair; then all at once she let the brown tress slip away, and dropped her face in her h..nds with a struggled-against sob.. •' Joanna," she cried, " think for one moment what you are putting away from you— out of your life." Joanna lifted her f*ice suddenly — a face pale, yet culm, in a sad strained w»y ; a fnce looking paler thau the moonlight in its cloudlike frame of brown hair. " Parole d'honneur 1" she said, as if halfr unconsciously, " parole d'honneur I" " Bnt you do not know," her friend pleaded; " y<>u cannot, I know, Joanna; and you are putting it away from you for ever You can never bring it back," The soft, worn young hand wearing theop'il riug crept up to her shoulder with a curious, caressing touch; '■ Hush, Belle 1" in an almost absent way ; t: hush 1 What did he say ?" "Nothing," was the bitter reply; "nothing as it may seem to you. Only that all was over — only that you had left him no hope— /only what men always say under such circumstances ; and P left him sitting, there alone, resting his head on his hand and looking at the white rose you gave him. That ia all." She could not help being impassioned. She had flung ,a way her own life's bliss not many years ago, and the old chord was so stnngly touched to-night that she was stirred to some faint bitterness even agaiusfc Joanna Forsythe, who must needs set aside love for honour's sake. She had set aside love for less. In a minute more she was startled not a little. The white figure had begun to shiver — faintly at first ; nnd then with greater stre-gth the nervous hands caught hers in a wild grasp. There was a tiny gasp for breath, as it were— -another,, and yet another; and Joanna had slipped into her arms sobbing panting, and shaken with such a force of long-crushed passion as was terrible to look upon. It was not weeping — it was something worse ; . something infinitely worse iv Joanna Forsythe. "All the bitter, slow trials of the girl's life won their tears in this oue convulsion of emotion. Trials long unwept had their share of it, perhaps ; trials of disappointment and secret pain, of hope blighted, and fears realised. She had been so strong and faithful to her girlish principle of self-control before, bufc__ no for the brief moment she lost her uower. " I have been drifting— drifting— drifting all my life," she cried ; and now, when I see the shore shining near me, I must pass it by for ever — fir ever — for ever I" Perhaps through all the years of their acquaintance, Lady Lundie had half accused Joanna Forsythe of coldness. It is certain that until this hour she had never seen her as she reil!y was ; she had never dreamed of the strength of repressed feeling which lay beneath her almost oddly, ungirlish reticence and quiet. This wildly weeping creature, whose passionate voico was a cry of despair — nay, almost of rebellion — was something far, far apart from the girl whose sereue eyes and quiet tone had held at bay a man who was ten years her senior, and whose love for her was akin to adoration. When at last the sudden storm had spent itself, and she sat pale and breathless, Lady Lundie stared at her in an actual doubt as to her reality. She began to comprehend dimly. " Joanna !" she cried out ; "Joanna, you love him !" " Yes," answered Joanna, slowly ; " yes— - I love him 1" " And yet mean to hold faith with this other ?»' " I can see no other way," said Joanna ; "he loved me first ; he has been true to me, and he has my promise. Yes, I shall hold faith wiih him." And meeting her steadfast eyes, Lady Lundie felt that she would nofc falter. The next day Dugald Barholm left Loch Ransa, and thereafter the two were alone together. By a tacit consent they let the past lie in silence. Joanna was herself again, it seemed ; only as the days slipped by, one by one, she was paler and more prone to the old dreaming silences. After Dugald was gone, his name was rarely mentioned between them. They took their usual strolls over heath aud hills, and brought back treasures of moss and gorse and fern, as they had always done ; bufc their

conversation was always quiet in its tone, I and untouched by any reference to what was or might have been. Fond as they were of each other in a friendly, womanly way, the subtle chord of perfect inner sympathy had never stretched itself from Lady Lundie's heart to Joanna Forsythe. It is just possible thafc had the two summer months following Dugald Barholm's departure been spent with other women, the girl's heart would not have been so folded within itself. It is just possible, I say ; for Joanna's very childhood had benn as utterly her own as her woman hood was ; none had ever penetrated its secrets. It was not until the very day of her return to E'ii.iburgh that the silence that existed between the two on the one subject was broken. Just at the last moment of her stay — just at the last moment when tlie carriage awaited her at the door — Lady Lundie was standing with Joanna at one of the windows, when she saw the grave, brown eyes fi'l with a yearning shadow, and all afc once the girl turned her face upward and Bpoke to her. " Tell h : m," she said, " when you see hina ■—tell him what I did not daTe to tell him then — tell him that the white rose was a symbol -, and tell him, too, Belle, tbat I made you promise to say to him just these words, ' Pamte d'honneur.' " In Oitober she was married. The next Christmas Lady Lundie received a farewell letter from her, written ou the eve of her departure with her husband for India, where business ha'i unexptctedly called him. Three years after, Lady Lundie was in Berlin with her husband. At the theatre one night her attention was drawn by a bystander to a party in a box afc a short distance from her own. '■ t\ little Scotchwoman who bas been in Calcutta for the last few years with hor husband," said the gentleman ; " I call youri attention to her not so much because she is a beauty as because she is one of those women who possess a wondrous power of controlling fascination over people ; not a common fascination, either— a curious charm which no one quite understands, and no one can resist ; her husband is one of the happiest men I know, and adores her ; but though she is beautifully subservient in a delicate, womanly way to his light, st wish, I always feel as if there was a trifling mystery in their union ; I don't know why exactly ; perhaps it is only a fancy, af rer all ; look at her, Lady lundie ; she is speaking to him now." Lady Lundie turned her eyes towards the box indicated, and gave a little start. The lady Bpoken of was a slender, quiet little body in white drapery — a litde woman with a wondrously fair face, sweet, intense brown eyes, aud soft masses of brown hair the colour of autumn leaves. It was Joanna Lauder. It was not many minutes, of course, before the two were face to face, for Lady Lundie made her way to the box. It was Joanna Lauder now ; but Joanna Lauder differed very little from Joanna Forsythe. It was the same steadfast, silent face Lady Lundie j met in her first glance— just the same face, only with a subtle shadow upon its sweet lines. " And Mr Dugald Barholm ?" she inquired of her friend during the course of their evening's conversation ; " where is he ?" " Ho spent a few days of the shooting season with us at Loch Ransa," answered Lady Lundie ; "he spoke of you to me often. He is not yet married, Joanna." And Joanna Liuder, lo king across the house, saw, not the painted .scenery of the stage, but a f intly starlit garden, where the blossoms hung their heads and trailed in the grass, heavy with summer rain, aud aimost felt again the fragrant wet west wind that blew upon her brow wheu she heut down to take up the one white rose which hal fallen at Dugald Barholm's feet.