Grand Rapids Herald-Review Newspaper, April 17, 1897, Page 6

a OTSTEPS OF FATE. ¥ By LOUIS COUPERUS. ® TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH. EGE OEE OE IO PART I. IL. That evening, on their return from -their walk, after dinner, over a cup of coffee, they discussed their further projec’ “We Archil i “And so are we!” Frank exclaimed. The old gentleman at once expressed a wish that the friends should continue to give him and his daughter the pleasure of their society. Frank had taken a great fancy to him, end Bertie thought him courteous and good com- pany; Bertie had talked a great deal about America; but he had not told the whole history of his farming experi- ences in the Far West; he had indeed idealized it a little by speaking of “My farm.” And Frank did not con- tradict him. By the end of two days spent at Dronthjem they were the best of friends; with that confidential intima- ey which, on a tour, when etiquette is out of court, sometimes arises from mere contact, without any knowledge of chara on either side, simply from sympathy in trifles and mutual attraction, a superfi sentiment of transient admiration which occupied the traveler's leisure. The day on the steamboat to Molde was like a party of pleasure, in spite of the rain which drove them below; and in the cabin, over a bottle of champagne, Miss Eva and the three men played a rubber of whist. But afterwards, in a gleam of pale sunshine, there was an endless walk to and fro on the wet deck. The tow, rocky shore glided slowly past on the larboard side; the hills, varying in -outline—now close together and again showing a gap—covered with brown moss down by the water, and gray above, with patches of pale-rose or dull purple light. At Christiansand they were far from land, and the waters, now rougher, were crimson in the glory e going to Molde!” said Sir of the sinking sun, fast approaching the horizon. Every wave had a crest of waye-colored foam, as though the ocean were on fire. Frank and Eva, meanwhile, pacing up and ¥down, laughed at each other’s faces, redden- ing like a couple of peonies, or like two maskers rouged by the glow of the sun to the semblance of clowns. They reached Molde late at night, too late to see its lovely fjord. The next morning there it lay before them, a long, narrow inlet, encircled by mountains capped with snow; a poem; a song of mountains; pure, lofty, beau- tiful, severe, solemn, without one jar- ring note. The sky above them was calmly gray, like brooding melancholy, and the peace that reigned sounded like a passionless andante. Ill. Next day, when Sir Archibald pro- posed a walk up Moldehof, Bertie de- elared that he was tired, and did not feel well, and begged to be left at home. In point of fact, he thought that the weather did not look promis- ing; vy clouds were gathered about the chair. of hilltops which shut in the fjord, like a sweeping drapery of rain, threatening ere long to fall and wrap everything in their gloomy folds; when people are traveling they must not be afraid of 2 wetting. So the three set out; and Bertie, in his patent slippers, remained in the drawing room of the Grand Hotel, with a book and a half- pint bottle. The road was muddy, but they step- ped out valiantly in their water-proofs and stout boots. The rain, which hung threateningly over their heads, did not daunt them, but gave a touch of ro- mantic adventure to the expedition, as though it threatened to submerge them in an impending deluge. Once off the beaten roads, and still toiling upwards, they occasionally missed the track, which v lost in a plashy bog, or vunder f dripping with rain, or struck 4 a wild growth of blue bilberrie They crossed the m: using the rocks as stepping stone old gentleman without help, and Eva ‘with her hand in Frank's, fearing lest her little feet should slide on. the smeooth, green moss. She laughed gai- iy, skipping from stone to stone with his help: sometimes suddenly slipping and supporting herself against his shoulder, and then again going on bravely, trying the stones with her stout stick. She felt as though she no particular heed, now that at her side; and he would sup- wort her if she stumbled; and they chat- ‘ted eagerly as they went, almost leap- ung from rock to rock, “What sort of a man is your friend, Mr. Westhove?” Eva suddenly in- quired . Frank was a little startled; it was always an unpleasant task to give any information concerning Bertie, less on account of his past life than of his present position; his quiet sponging on himself, nk, who, though enslaved by Bertie. knew full well that the situ- ation was strange, to say the least of it, in the eyes of the world. “Oh, he is a man who has been very -anfortunate,” he said, evasively, and he presently added: “Has he not made a pleasant impression on you?” Eva laughed so heartily that she was mear falling into a pool of mud, if Frank had not firmly thrown his arm wound her waist. “Eva, Eva!” cried her father, shak- ing his head, “pray be more careful!” Eva drew herself up with a slight blush. “What can I say?” she went on, pur- ‘suing the subject. “If L were to speak the whole truth—’ “Of course.” “But perhaps you will be vexed; for I can see very plainly that you are quite infatuated with your BP “Then, you do not like him? “Well, then—if you insist on know- ing; the first day when I made his ac- -quaintance, I thought him insufferable. With you we got on famously at once, as an amusing traveling compan- “ton, but with him—but perhayps he shas not traveled mnehy” >] $45 16 ON 6 “Oh, yes, he has,” said Frank, who could not help smiling. “Well, then, perhaps he was shy or awkward. However, I began to think differently of him after that; I don’t tnink him insufferable now.” It was strange, but Frank felt no par- ticular satisfaction on hearing of the young lady’s changed opinion; he made no reply. “You say he has had much to trouble him. And, indeed, I can see it in his face. There is something so gentle in him, so tender, I might almost say; such soft, dark eyes, and such a sweet voice. At first, as I tell you, I found it intolerable, but now it strikes me as rather poetical. He must certainly be a poet, and have been crossed in love; he can be no commonplace man.” “No, that he certainly is not,” said Frank, vaguely, a little ill at ease over Eya’s raptures; and a mingling of jealousy and regret—something like an aversion for the worldly polish, and a dull envy of the poetic graces which Eva attributed to his friend, ran through his veins like a chill. He glanced up, almost pathetically, at the pretty creature, who was sometimes so shrewd and sometimes so naive; so learned in all that bore on her favorite studies, so ignorant of real life. A dim compassion came over him, and, on a sudden, the gray rain-clouds weighed upon them with a pall of mel- ancholy, as though they were ominous of some inevitable fatality which threatened to crush her. His fingers involuntarily clasped her hand more tightly. “Here is the path once more!” cried Sir Archibald, who was twenty steps ahead of them. - “Oh, yes! There is the path! Thank you, Mr. Westhover!” said Eva, and she sprang from the last stepping- stone, pushing her way through the snapping braken to the beaten track. “And up there is the hut with the weathercock,” her father went on. “I believe we have made a long round out of our way: Instead of chattering so much, you would do well to keep a sharp look-out for the path. My old eyes, you know——” “But it was great fun jumping over the stones,” laughed Eva. Far above them they could see the hut with the tall pole of the weather- cock, and they went on at an easier pace, their feet sinking in the violet and pink-blossomed heath, crushing the bilberries, dimly purple, like tiny grapes. Eva stooped and picked some. “Oh! so nice and sweet!” she ex- claimed wit childish surprise, and she pulled some more, dyeing her lips and fingers blue with the juice of the ber- ties. “Taste them, Mr. Westhove.” He took them from her soft, small hand, stained as it was with purple blood. It was true; they were deli- ciously sweet, and such fine ones! And then they went on again, fol- lowing Sir Archibald, often stopping and triumphing like children when they came on a large patch where the wortleberries had spread unhindered, like a miniature orchard. “Papa, yapa! Do try them!’ Eva cried, heedless of the fact that papa was far ahead; but Sir Archibald was not out of sight, and they had to run to overtake him; Eva’s laughter ring- ing like a bell, while she lamented that she must leave so many berries un- touched—and such beauties! “I daresay there will be plenty round the hut,” said Frank, consolingly. “Do you think so?” she said, with a merry laugh. “Oh, what a couple of babies we are!” ‘The path grew wider, and they found it easy walking up to the top, some- times quitting the track and scram- bling over the stones to shorten the way. Presently they heard a shout, and, looking up, they saw Sir Archibald standing on the cairn in which the staff of the weathercock was fixed, and waving his traveling-cap. They hur- 1 on, and soon were at his side. Eva knocked at the door of the hut. “The hut is shut up,” said her father. “How stupid!” she exclaimed. “Why does it stand here at all if it is shut up? Does no one live in it?” “Why, of course not,” said Sir Archi- bald, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Frank helped Eva to climb the cairn round the pole, and they looked down at the panorama at their feet. “It is beautiful, but melancholy,” said Eva. The long fjord lay before them, a narrow ribbon of pale, motionless wa- ter, hemmed in by mountains, now wreathed with gray vapor, through which they gleamed fitfully like ghosts of mountains; Lapparen and Vengetin- der, Trolltinder and Romsdalhorn, tow-. ering up through the envious, rolling mist, which, swelled by the coming storm, hung in black clouds from ev- ery peak and cast a gloomy reflection on the still waters. The hills were weeping — unsubtantial, motionless phantoms, sorrowing and tragical un- der some august and superhuman woe —a grief as of giants and demigods; the fjord, a plot of gardens, and roofs, and walls, and the white chatlet of the rand Hotel—all weeping, all motion- less under the gloomy sky. A ghostly chill rose up from the gulf to where the trio stood, mingling with the tangi- ble clamminess of the mist, which scemed to weigh on their eyelids. It was not raining, but the moisture seemed to distil on them from the black, unbzoken wrack of clouds; and to the westwards, between two cliffs which parted to show a gleaming strip of ocean, a streak was visible of pale gold and faint rose-color—hardy more than a touch of pink, a sparkle of gold —a stinted alms of the setting sun. They scarcely said another word, op- Eressed by the superhuman sadness which enwrapped them like a shroud. When Eva, at last, spoke, her clear voice sounded far away—through a curtain. “Look! there is a glint of sunshine over the sea. Here we are pining for the sun. Oh, I wish the sun would break through the clouds!. It is dismal here—so dreary! How well I under- stand Oswald’s cry in Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts,’ when he is going mad: ‘The sun, the sun! Men might pine for sunshine here and get no more than the distant gleam. Oh, I am perished!” “Are you cold, my child? Shall we go home?” he asked, Ehe nodded, and they both helped her down on the heap of stones. Why, she knew not, but suddenly she had thought of her mother, who was dead; and wondered whether she had ever felt thus forlorn, in spite of her fath- er’s fondness. But when they came in sight of the hut again, she said, as if it had just occurred to her: “Papa, there are some names cut in the door; let us cut ours, too.” “But, child, you are so cold and pale——” “Never mind; let us cut our names; I want to,” she urged, like a spoiled child. “No, Eva—what nonsense!” “Oh, but I do want to,” she repeated, coaxingly; but the old man would not give in, grumbling still; Frank, howev- er, pulled out his pocketknife. “Oh, Mr. Westhove, do cut my name; nothing but KMyva—only three letters. Will you?” she asked, softly. Frank had it on his lips that he would like to cut his own name with hers, although it was so long; but he was silent; it would have sounded flat an commonplace in the midst of this mournful scenery. So he carved the letters on the door, which was like a travelers’ album. Eva stood gazing out to the west, and she saw ‘the three streaks of gold turn pale, and the rose- tint fade away. “The sun, the sun!” she murmured, with a shudder, and a faint smile on her white lips and in her tearful eyes. A few heavy drops of rain had begun to fall. Sir Archibald asked if they were ever coming, and led the way. Eva nodded with a smile, and went up to Frank. “Have you done it, Mr. Westhove?” “Yes,” said Frank, hastily finishing the last letter. A She looked up and saw that he had cut “Eva Rhodes,” in very neat, even letters, smoothly finished. Below he had roughly cut “Frank,” in a great hurry. “Why did you add ‘Rhodes? ” she asked, and her voice was faint, as if | far away. “Because it took longer,” } Frank, simply. replied iV. They got back to the Grand Hotel in a torrent of rain, a deluge poured out of all the urns of heaven; muddy to their waists, wet to their skins and chilled to the bone. Eva, after a hot supper, was sent off to bed by her father, and the three men—Sir Archi- bald, Frank and Bertie—-sat in the drawing room, where a few other vis- itors, all very cross at the bad weath- er, tried to solace themselves with il- lustrated papers or albums. ‘The old gentleman took a doze in an easy chair. Frank gazed pensively at the straight streaks of rain, which fell ike an endless curtain of close steel nee- dies, thrashing the curtain of the fjord. Bertie sipped a hot grog and looked at his shiny slippers. “And you did not miss my company on your excursion?” he asked, address- ing Frank with a smile, just to break the silence that reigned in the room. Westhove turned to him in some sur- prise, as if roused from a dream; then, with a frank laugh, he briefly an- swered: “No.” Bertie stared at him; but his friend had already turned away, lost in thought over the patter of the rain; so Bertie at last took up his book again end tried to read. But the letters danced before his eyes; his ears and nerves still thrilled uncomfortably un- der the remembrance of that one short, astounding word which Frank had fired into the silence like a leaden bul- let. It annoyed him that Frank should take no further notice of him. Frank stood unmoved, looking out at the mountains, scarcely visible through the watery shroud; what he saw was their walk back from Moldehof; the meandering, downward path through the tall, dripping braken; the pelting rain streaming in their faces as from a watering-pot; Eva, closely wrapped in her wet mackintosh, and clinging to his arm as if seeking his protection; be- hind them her father, carefully feeling the slippery, moss-grown stones with his walking stick. Frank had wanted to wrap her in his own water-proof coat, but this she had positively re- jected; she would have him made ill for her sake, she said, in that far-away voice. Aud then, when they were home again, and had changed their clothes and dined, and laughed over their adventure, Sir Archibald was afraid lest Eva should have taken cold. _Frank remembered at this moment a fragment of their conversation; his asking her. a little surprised, in spite of himself, ‘‘Have you read_ Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts? You spoke of Oswald when we were up on Moldehof.” As it happened, he had himself read “Ghosts,” and he did not think it a bock for a young girl; she noticed his tae) and blushed deeply as she re- plied: “Yes, I have read it. I read a great deal, and papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines. Do you think that I ought not to have read ‘Ghosts?’ ” She herself had seen no harm in it, had not, perhaps, fully understood it, as she candidly confessed. He had not ventured to tell her that the study of such a draina of pyhsiological heredity, was, to say the least, unnecessary for a young girl; he had answered vague- ly, and she had colored yet more deep- ly, and said no more. “She must have regarded me as a prig of a schoolmaster!” thought he, ill at ease. “Why should she not read what she likes? She does not need my permission for her reading; she is grown up enough. She must have thought me a pedantic owl.” “Frank!” said Bertie, again. “What?” said Frank, startled. “We leave this place to-morrow, I suppose?” “Yes; that was our plan. At least if the weather improves.” “What is the name of the next out- landish spot we are going to?” “Vegblungnaes; and from thence to Ktomsdal and Gudbrandsdal.” “And the Rhodes?” “They are going to Bergen.” “To-morrow?” | “J don’t know.” And he stood once more lost in thought; the gray, wet atmosphere without cast a gloom on the scene within; and in his soul, too, reigned the deepest gloom. What was the use of fostering warm feelings when a few days of sympathetic companionship could end only in parting? This was always the case with friecdly traveling acquaintance, and was it not so throughout life, with everyone—every- thing—we love? Was it worth while to care for anything? Was not all love a great delusion, by which men pote themselves to their disgust at e PART IL. 1 December in London. Cold and fog- gy. White-Rose Cottage wrapped in mist; in the back room a blazing fire. But Robert Van Maern was no long- er in the blissful mood to enjoy this luxury, as we have hitherto known him; moreover, he now regarded it as quite a matter-of-course, which came to him by right, since he was a creat- ure of such refined feelings, so slight and fragile, and did not feel himself born to endure poverty and want. Still, he had known misery, the slav- ery of hired labor, to which he had bent his back with crafty subservience; still, he had felt the gnawings of hun- ger, the bitterness of squalid beggary. But all this seemed long ago, and as vague as a dream, or as the vanishing Iines of the London streets out there, dimmed and blurred by the pall of fog; as indistinct as our dubious impress- ions of a former state of existence. For, after his metamorphosis, he had determined to forget—he had forced himself to forget; never for an instant to recall his sufferings, or to think of the future. He hated the past as an injustice, a disgrace, aniredical stain on the superficial spotlessness of his present life; he had persuaded himself that all those things which he had now hidden, buried, forever ignored, had, indeed, never happened. And he had succeeded in this ¢ffacement of his life in America; it seemed wiped out of the annals of his memory. Why, now, must these years rise slowly before him, like ghosts out of the grave of oblivion? What had they to say to him now? Nearer and near- er, till, year by year, month by month, day by day, they passed before him, dancing in the flames at which he sat staring, like a Dance of Death of the years. They grinned at him from skulls, with hollow eyes and pallid faces, distorted by a crafty smile; the dead years which beckoned to him, wearing filthy rags and poisoning his cigar with their foul odor. He saw them, he smelt them; he shuddered with their chill—there, in front of the fire; he felt their hunger, in spite of the dinner that awaited him. Why was it that the future, which he no less persistently ignored, was begin- ning to hang over him as an omen of evil, which each day, each hour, brought nearer and nearer, irresistibly, inevitably ?—That future must perhaps be such as the past had been. Yes, something was impending. There he sat, sick with alarms, cowardly, spiritless, effete. Something was in the air; he felt it coming nearer, to overwhelm him, to wrestle with him for life or dgath in a frenzy of despair; he felt himself tottering, sinking; he was torn from the ease and comfort of his present life, cast out into the streets, without shelter, without any- thing- For what had he of his own? The clothes he wore, the shoes on his feet, the ring on his finger were Frank’s. ‘Phus it had been for a year past; and if he were to go with all he possessed, he would go—naked, in the winter. And he could not again be, as he had been in America, tramping for work day after, day. His body and mind alike were enervated, as by a warn: bath of luxury; he had become like a hot-house plant which is accus- tomed to the moist heat, and perishes when it is placed in the open air. But it hung over him, cruel and unrelent- ing; not for an instant did the threat relax, and in his abject weakness he feebly wrung his white hands, and two tears, hot with despair, rolled down his cheeks. Struggle for existence! He was inca- pable of such a battle; his energy was too lax for that—a laxity which he had felt growing on him as a joy after his fight for life, but which now had made him powerless to screw himself up to sie merest semblance of determina- tion. And before him he saw the fateful chain of events passing onwards— some so infinitely small—each detail a terrible lmk, and all leading on to catastrophe. Strange that each one was the outcome of its predecessor- the future the outcome of the past! If, after his failure from sheer idleness at Leyden, his father had not placed him as a clerk in the office of a Manchester house, he would probably never have known certain youths, his fellow- clerks, fashionable young rakes, and fierce “strugglers for existence;” still scarcely more than boys, and already the worse for dissipation. If he had never known them—and yet, how pleas- antly they had borne him along, mere- ly by humoring his natural bent!—he might, perhaps, not have played such underhand tricks with the money be- longing to the firm that his patron, out of sympathy and regard for his father, had helped him to go to America. That was where he had sunk deepest, swamped in the maelstrom of more en- ergetic fortune-hunters. If only he had been less unlucky in America, he would not have foun himself stranded in Lon- don in such utter destitution, or have appealed to Westhove for help. And Frank—but for his suggestion, Frenk would never have gone to Nor- way, never have met Eva. Oh, that journey to Norway! how he cursed it now; for Frank might, perhaps, not have fallen in love, and never have thought of marriage. And now—only yesterday, Westhove had called at Sir Archibald’s house, where the two friends had been made very welcome after their acquaintance in Norway, and had come home engaged to Eva. Frank would marry, and he, Bertie? Where was he to go? What was to be- come of him? He was painfully conscious of the fa- tality of life, of the injustice of the dispensations of fortune ;and he dis- cerned that his own immediate diffi- culties owed their origin to a single word. One single word: Norway!— Norway, Eya, Frank’s falling in love, Frank’s engagement and marriage, and his own shipwreck—how horribly clear he saw every link of the chain of his own life in each wordi One word, ut- tered under a foolish impulse: Nor- way. And it had irretrievably wrought the happiness of two other persons at tg ope of his own. Injustice! Injust- ice And he cursed the impulse, the mys- terious, innate force which more or less prompts every word we speak; and he cursed the fact that every word ut- tered by the tongue of man remains beyond recall. What is that impulse? Something obscurely good, an uncon- scious “better self,” as men declare, which, though deeply and mysteriously hidden,, dashes about like an unbroken colt, treading down the most elaborate results of careful thought? Oh, if he had but held his tongue! Why Nor- way? What eoncern had he with that one fatal, fateful land, above all oth- ers? Why not Spain, Russia, Japan, good God- Kamschatka, for aught he cared; why especially Norway? Idiot- ic impulse, which had unlocked his miserable lips to pronounce that luck- less name; and oh, the injustice of Fate, of life, of everything! Energy? Will? What could will and energy do against Fate? ‘They were words, empty words. Be a cringing fatalist, like a Turk or Arab, and let day follow day; never think; for, be- hind thought lurks impulse!—Fight? Against Fate, who forges her chains blindly, link upon link? He threw himself back in his chair, still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears trickled again and again down his cheeks. He saw his own cowardice take shape before him; he stared into its frightened eyes, and he did not con- demn it. For he was as Fate had made him. He was a craven, and he could not help it. Men called such an one as he a coward; it was but a word. Why coward, or simple and loy- al and brave, or good and noble? It was alla matter of convention, ». con- cept, an illusion of the brain. ‘Yhere was nothing real at all—nothing! And yet there was something real: misery and poverty were real, He had felt them, wrestled with them hand to hand; and now he was too weak to fight them again, too delicate, too re- fined! He would not face them again! Then, leaning back, with his pallid head resting against the cushioned back of his chair, his deep-est, black eyes clouded with the venom of these reflections, he was aware of a gentle, pleasant electric current thrilling through him—a current of Will. KFatal- ity had willed to bring Frank and Eva ether; well, he—a mere plaything of ‘ate—would will that—— Yes. He would part them. And before his very eyes, as it seemed, that purpose rose up, cold and rigid, an evil and mysterious form, like an incarnation of Satanic malign- ity. It looked at him with the yes of a Sybil, of a Sphinx; and, as compared with the Titanic cruelty of that image, his former visions sank into nothing- uess—the Dance of Death of the years, the continuity of Fatality, and his curs- ing of it all. These now vanished, and he only saw that figure, like a ghost, almost tangible and almost visibly sol- id in the dusk, against the dying low of the fire. The gloomy, questioning gaze of those eyes, hypnotized his soul; his instinct fell asleep under its crushing power. * * * Friendship! gratitude! They, too, were mere words. There was nothing real in life but conventionality, and—poverty. And then, there was that image—there, in front of the fire—with its staring, fixed gaze uetrified to an embodiment of si- lent, irresistible, infernal magnetism- i That night—he saw Frank no more, for he had stayed to dine with Sir Ar- chibald Rhodes—that night Van Maer- en could not sleep; the wildest fancies kept him wide awake. Illusions and schemes whirled through his fevered brain; strange voices buzzed in his ears, hissing like an angry sea. He saw himself sitting with Eva, in a cab, passing through the gloomiest and foulest parts of London. Squalid fig- ures stood in their way and came close to Eva. He laughed as he saw her dragged away by men with brutal faces, and then come back to him with her clothes torn, sobbing because she had been insulted. A fearful headache hammered in his brain, and he groaned with a painful effort to control the wild etravagance of his fancy. He got up, rubbing his eyes, as if to drive away the melodramatic vision, and wrapped his burning head in a wet, cold towel. He involuntarily looked in the glass, and, in the subdued glimmer of the nightlight, his face stared back at him as pale as death, drawn and haggard, with hollow, sunken eyes and gaping mouth. His heart beat violent- ly, as if it were rising into his thoat, and he pressed it down with both hands. After drinking a glass of wa- ter he lay down again, forcing himself to be calm. Subtler fancies now crowd- ed his mind, like fine threads of gold athwart and across—webs mingled in a maze like an inextricable tangle of lace; and his imagination worked out the intricacies of weariful intrigues, as thongh he were a poet who, during a night of lucid sleeplessness, constructs a drama, and, not content with its plot, goes through it again and again, to master the great conception in his mind before writing it out. Now he saw the orgies of a past day repeating themselves in the sitting- room. He saw the skating-rink, and Frank and himself drinking cham- pagne, and laughing and singing. But suddenly the door opened, and Sir Ar- chibald came in with Eva on his arm. Sir Archibald cursed Frank with tre- mendous words and vehement gestures, and Frank hung his head; but Eva threw herself between them, with words of anguish and imploring hands. And it was all the last scene of the fourth act of an opera. ‘The singing in his ears, and the dreadful throbbing in his aching head were like the thun- der of a full orchestra, excited to the utmost by the beat of an energetic con- ductor, and the loud, strindent crash of brass instruments. Bertie Moaned and tossed from side to side, compelling himself to picture less violent scenes. Now it was like a modern comedy. Eva, at his sugges- tion, was suspiciously watching Annie, the maid and housekeeper at White- Rose Cottage. Eva was jealous, and then a gyand catastrophe—Eva finding Annie in Frank’s arms! Sick with thinking, bewildered by his own imaginings, he drove away the chaotic vision, Exhaustion overcame him; his frenzy was worn out, though his head was still burning, throbbing, bursting; although acute pain shot through his brain, from his brows to his neck, as if he were being scalped; although the blood in his temples leaped furiously in his veins, with rythmical torture. And in the immedi- ate torment of physical suffering, his pride, which was to defy fatality, col- lapsed like a tower crumbling into ru- ins. His imagination became vacancy; forgot his terrors of the future. He inf motionless, bathed in iy, sweat; his eyes and mouth wi and the indecision of exha softened light on all his fancies—mere delirious dreams, which could never pear the faintest resemblance to real- ity. Things must go on as they might, he lazily thought; the eM a was still remote; he would think more about it; he would let himself go with the chain of events, link by link; it was madness to double his fists agains: Fate, which was so strong—So omnipo- tent. i. The following days passed quietly enough, though a vague fear still hung over Bertie’s head. He bowed that head without further thought, but still with a dull ferment in the depths of his heart, below the superficial calm. Then, one day, he went with Frank to the Rhodes’, and Eva, taking his hand, said: “We shall be good friends, shall we not?” ‘And after she had spoken he heard her voice still ringing in his ears like little bells. He mechanically let his velvety eyes rest on hers sand smiled, and allowed her to lead him to a sofa, and show him designs for furniture and patterns of curtains for their new home—her home and Frank’s. Frank himself sat a little way off talking to Sir Archibald. He looked at them, sit- ting side by side, like brother and s ter, ow the softly-cushioned settec— their heads bent together over the rustling pages of the pattern book, their hands meeting from time to time. And his brows were knit in a frown of displeasure. And yet he laughed, and said to Evrae ’ “Bertie will be of the greatest use he has far better taste than I.” And he felt as though he had spoken the words in spite of himself, or had meant to say something other than this compliment; but he could not help it. All the time he was talking politic to Sir Archibald his eyes rested o them, magnetically attracted by the familiar manner. There was a sisterly gentleness i iva, an emanation of sympathy f: her lover's friend, a somewhat Frome tic interest in the mystery of V: Maeren’s fine dark eyes and insinus ing voice, and a compassion for tl deep, Byronie sorrows which she attri uted to him—something like the esthe ic pathos of a sentimental reader ov the inexplicable woes of a hero of r mance. It was to her a poetic friendship, which very harmoniously supplement- ed her love for Frank Westhove; a kind of love of which, in her girlish enthusi- asm, she had never imagined the exist- erce; and of which, if she could have suspected it, she would certainly never have thought herself capable; a ca peaceful and true affection, p' almost homely, without the fa tinge of romance; a love, not blind to her lover's faults, but faithful to him in spite of them, like a mother’s for her undeserving child. She perceived his indolence over every voluntary effort, his indecision over every serious ques- tion, his vacillation between this and that; and did not blind herself to all this weakness which had gained her heart, as a pleasing contrast wit} the cool, uneffusive, sober affection o( her father, who spoiled her, indeed, but never so much as she herself de Then, there was another con which charmed her even more, w had filled her heart with an adn tion that had become a_passio: contrast in Frank himself, of his mild, yielding character with the robust W\- or of his stalwart person. She, woman h in the fact of this splendidly-s youth, with his broad chest and ders, his great mane of fair ha powerful neck—this man, whos: pleness and ease in lifting and m things betrayed constant practice in the use of his limbs—being so feeble in determination and so gentle in de meanor. When she was alone and thought of him so, she could not help smiling, though the tears came into her eyes—tears of happiness—for this con- trast made her happy. It w: very strange, she thought, and she could not understand it; it was a riddle; but she did not try to solve it, for it was 2 rid- dle that she loved; and as she thought of it, with smiling Hips and tear-dim- med eyes, she longed only to have her arms around his neck—her own Frank's. She did not idealize him; she never now thought of platonic twin souls in superhuman ecstasy; she took him as he was, a mere man; and it was for what he was that she worshipped him. calm and at rest in her worship. Al though she knew that the romantic side of her nature could neyer find ful- fillment—such as it now did through her sisterly regard for Bertie—she had no regret for it in her abounding love for Frank. And since her nature found completion in the enjoyment of tije mo- ment, she was pleased and quite’s . fied ,and felt such a sunny glow in her and about her as deserves to be called true happiness. This was her frame of mind now. 2s she looked through the patterns with Bertie, while Frank sat chatting with her father. There was the man she loved, here her brother-friend. Tis was all good; she never could wish for‘ anything more than to be thus happy in her love and her friendship. Sie looked at Bertie with a protecting anc pitying smile, and yet with a touch of contempt at his slight, boyish figure, his white hands and diamond ring, bis little feet in patent-leather shoes, hard- ly larger than her own; what a dapper little manikin he was! Always spot- lessly precise in dress and manner. with an appealing cloud of melancholy over his whole person. As he glanced up at h msulting her about some detail in one of the prints, Bertie detected this smile oD Eva's face, ironically patronizing, 0\! at the same time kind and erly and, knowing that she liked ‘him, b: could, to some extent, read its mea" ing; but he asked her: “What are you smiling at?” To Be Continued. Mixed Proverbs. “How are you coming on wit? yout music? Can you play Beethover: symphonies?” asked Indge Peterby a young Harlem lady who is learrits to play on the piano, ~ “I've not got quite that far yet. Yo! can’t learn everything at once. Y know Columbus’ egg was not lait! a single day,” was the reyIp—Tex’ - Siftings. ; ON a