CHAPTER XX. THE END OF CHRISTOPHER'S ROMANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 17, 21 August 1885, Page 5

CHAPTER XX. THE END OF CHRISTOPHER'S ROMANCE.

Paul wrote later : " I waa reading to her aloud in a safe green refuge which we had sought out of the heat. I had chosen a volume of very sweet, old-fashioned poetry, which treats of the passion of love with more delicacy, and not less fervor, than some of our modern poets think well to use. We stopped to laugh at a squirrel, who had put his nose out of a tree ; and she said, as if the squirrel had reminded her of something, or she had not been thinking of the squirrel after all— « « I have heard that you are a poet. Will you show me some of your rhymes V " I did not stop to ask her who had told her a thing so monstrous. Some versss I had just written lay in the book I held in my hand. I had not thought of showing them to her, nor anything of the kind. She would pity me again. Yet some wild whim seized me, and I put the paper in her hand. " • There is a secret in this,' I said. flf you find it, be tender with it.' " She was taken by suprise, and the paper fluttered as she opened it. I stood a little aloof while she read my crazy lines. I don't know what I had hoped for as I watched her read. A blush, a confusion, a look of consciousness without displeasure. What right had Ito look for these, after a former rebuff ? Had I seen them I should have spoken, and learned the truth, and the whole truth ; but nothing of the kind met my eyes. Her face got a little paler as she read, and there was a look of grief on it wheu she bad done ; her arm dropped by her side, and she crushed the paper into the heart of her folded hand. « « Such love ought to be returned,' she said coldly. « I am very ' sorry.' And we parted like two people made of ice. I hope lam sufficiently snubbed now j I shall return to Australia as soon as I have brought her safely to Monasterlea." 11 She was right to think that he is a poet," said May. "At least, he can write love songs." She was talking to herself in a cerlain little inn chamber, her own for the time, where o! late she had given herself up to many grave dreams and reveries. It was a chamber veiy fit for a youag maid to dream in, with a passion-flower running all round the window, looking out upon a waterfall descending with swift gleams of light into a melancholy tarn, whose perpetual splash and dip made a restless murmur of music through the place night and day. "If [ were in his place I would scorn to write them to her!" May opened her shut hand, and flung a little ball of crumpled paper fiercely *o the other end of the room, and then followed a long silence in the chamber, except for the music that was coming in through the window. She was kneeling at the open sash with her head, crushed up for coolness againsl tin broad clustered leaves of the passion-flower, and the silence was to her a long, fevered space of confused reflection, into which we have no more right to pry than into a private letter of the contents of which the owner has not yet possessed himself. The music from without was led by a haymaking woman down in the meadows below the inn, who, in a round supple voice, was singing a winding Irish tune ripe with melody. She had been singing every day and all day long for a week, and each time she sang it, it had seemed to become Bweeter and so'ter, growing familiar to May 's listening ears. Now the words of Paul's song wandered down into the meadows from the c >ruer where they had been so ignominiously flung, and set themselves to the tune as if by magic. They matched with the measure, and they wound themselves into the melody, and the waterfall made an accompaniment as it drummed and crushed and tiukled int > the tarn. At this time Aunt Martha had quite lost patience with the son of her adoption. Why should he look so gloomy 1 What cause had he for grief of any kind ? Was not all the world shining on him ? An inheritance in prospect — and — and — Miss Martha could go no further. She was too loyal to h*»rneice to declare even to her owa thoughts that a young man here among them might hare May for a wife. It was different from building castles while he was at the other side of the world ; but it was not for this ending, she was forced to confess, that Aunt Martha had left her nest under the belfry of Monasterlea, and taken to gipsy ways at her stay-at-home time of life. She had hoped that, in giving up her own comfort, she was at least doing something towards uniting two young heartß ; now it seemed that she had been doing nonsuch thing. After pondering over the matter very deeply, she shifted the blame from Paul, and persuaded herself that May must be in the wrong. Thinking over this, her anxiety got the better of her discretion. " Aunt Martha," eaid May one evening in the twilight, when Paul was absent, and Miss Martha fidgety, but knittiug in apparent peace, "I am terribly tired of this place. Let us go home 1 " '• Sit down here, child, and let me speak to you. You move about the room so you make me dizzy. If I speak to you in one corner, you are in another before I have done ; aud I can'c tell whei\3 my answer is coming from. I want t > a&k you a question.'' " Here I am, aunt, steady as a rock ? " " You have seen more of Paul than I have done lately. Do you think he has any intention of marrying and settliug down in his owa country 1 In his mother's place, I should like to Bee him settled, for many reasons." May knew too well what was passing iv her aunfs mind. The humiliating folly must be driven out wholly and without delay, even if Paul's secret must be dragged forth for the put pose. "I think nothing is more unlikely," she said with emphasis. " Indeed— it is not fair — we must not speak of it— but he has met with a disappointment which it seems he cannot get over. He will return to Australia before long. 0

May announced this from a vantage-ground at the back of her aunt's chair ; but she need not have been so cunning. Miss Martha's failing eyes were no way keen in the shifting dusk. " A disappointment 1 " The old lady sat erect in her chair, and ah afflicting idea weat whirling through her head. " I hope — May ! —you have not refused him I " " No, no, no 1 " said May breathless. " Oh, aunty ! you make a very great mistake ! " " Do I," said Miss Martha, meekly, in sad bewilderment at this proof of perversity of the heart of man. " Have I really made such a mistake as that ? And yet—" But May was gone ; and it was no use to go on talking to the empty walls. So the little party returned home under a cloud of gloom. As Miss Martha sat down thankfully under her own roof, she called herself an old fool for castle-building and match-making, for worrying herself at her time of life, when she ought to have peace. May felt like a stranger in returning to her home. Something had gone out of her life, and something had come into it, since she had last crossed the threshold of her familiar room ; but that was her own affair, and the walls must not know it. Paul looked pale and worn when he took his place at the table with them that evening, as unlike as possible to the joyful Panl who had sat down there on that first evening, now more than a month ago. He had fallen back so completely under the old shadow, that he was saying to himself, as he ate his bread, that he was a man accursed, who could never expect to be loved. Already here was the working of his evil influence. These friends who had gladly welcomed him had grown cold and constrained. A shadow had come over May, who had been so blithe with him at first. He would take leave of her to-night, and for the future think no more of being happy. The little brown parlor was full of s'arlight, when Miss Martha went out to talk to old Nanny about the pigs. And Paul snatched the opportunity, and began to s.iy farewell to May. He began so suddenly, she was so utterly without the key to his meaning, that half of his wild things had been said before she began to guesa what he was saying. '' I feared I should bring my shadow with me," he was declaring when she caught the drift of his words, " and I tried to keep away, and I could not. The memory of your face haunted me, and brought me back to your side. I love you as no one will ever Ire you again. What does it matter ? You pity me, I know. Some day I may be glad to remember it ; but now it cannot help me. For I have been fool enough to hope that I could win your entire love ; that you could save me from a curse ; that I might live and die aa blest a man as love ever made happy. Your pity has twice warned me, and yet I speak to you like this ; but it is because you will never see me any more. I chill you with my presence, and lam going away. I trust you may be happy. I hope that Mr. Lee may love and cherish—" Here Paul paused and panted, and looked able to punish Mr. Lee if the devotion of that unknown rival should be found faulty in its measure. Before he could finish h s sentence, the parlour was thrown open, and Bridget thrust herself in, with a sly, subdued grin upon her buxom face. " There's a gintlemen outbye wants to see ye, Miss. Despert anxious he is, Miss, if yon plase." " A gentleman !" said May. With new life dancing at her heart, with an inclination to laugh and to cry, with fear and delight, and a slight sense of the ridiculous all struggling within her at once, she seized upon some flower-pots, and began settling them in their stand , that Bridget might not see her face and the shaking of her bands. A gentleman I Bridget's announcement was as utrange as if she had said, " There is a troop of soldiers come to arrest you " ; but May did not know at the moment whether it was a Btrange thing or not. She only wished that Bridget would go away, so that Paul would speak again. "Yes, Miss. A fine big giutleman wid a spanking horse j Mistber Lee is his name, an' he says—" Paul had turned his back on the v lwelcome Bridget, and was standing at the open window looking out. When Bridget said, * • Misther Lee," he put his hand on the sill, vaulted quickly out, and disappeared. May sat down, and stared pitifully at her hand-maiden. Had the labs betn but away she might have held out a finger to keep Paul by her side ; but Bridget's presence was a broad fact, in every sense of the word ; and Paul was gone away. Not forever, oh, no, not forever I That would be too mad, when she had not even answered him nor said good-bye. " He said, Miss " went on Bridget, in her ignorance, " that he would not come in, 'but axes as a favour that you yoursel' would spake a word with him outbye." -..*•* >l Very well ; let him wait. Bridget, go for my handkerchief, if you please, on tie table, in my drawer, in my room." Bridget gone, she flew to the window, peeped across the Bash, thrust herself across the s ish. She could see faintly the moors, the meadows, the white path, the distant stile ; but there was no Paul anywhere to be seen 11 Paul 1" she whispered softly, " Paul," she wailed more audibly ; but he was not luikiug anywhere within the reach of a timid voice. (She drew back and leaned sickening, against the wall ; and then Bridget came back with the handkerchief, and there was nothing to be done but to go out and meet Christopher Lee. (To be contimied.)