The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 13, 1904, Page 4

ing the paper, told her to go to the kitchen and get her dinnmer. The wo- man rose with alacrity, and asking Mariposa to call her if the invalid showed signs of fatigue, or any change, left the room. The girl turned back to the bedside and took the chair. Lucy had taken from the dirty envelope a worn and faded paper, which she slowly unfolded. As she did so, she looked at her daugh- ter with sunken eyes and said: “"These are my marriage certificates. Mariposa, again thinking that her mind - was wandering, tried to smile, and answered gently: ‘Your marriage certificate, dear. You were only married once.” 1 was married twice,” said Lucy, and handed the girl the two papers. Still supposing her mother slightly delirious, the daughter took the papers and looked at them. The one her eye first fell on was that of the original marriage. She read the names with- out at first realizing whose they were. Then the significance of the “Lucy Fra- came upon her. Her glance leaped to the second paper, and at the first sweep of her eves over it she saw it was the marriage certificate of her father and mother, Daniel Moreau and Lucy Fraser, dated at Placerville twen- ty-five years before. She turned back to the other paper, now more than be- wildered, She held it near her face, as though it were difficult to read, and in the dead silence of the room it began to rustle with the trembling of her hand. A fear of something hideous and overwhelming seized her. With pale ips she read the names, and the date, antedating by five years the other cer- tificate Mothe: she cried, in a wild voice of inquiry, dropping the paper on the bed Lucy, raised on her pilloys, was look- ing at her with a haggard intentness. All the vitality left in her expiring body seemed concentrated in her eyes. ‘I was married twice,” she said slow- ser” 1y “But how? When? What does mean? Mother, what does it mean?” 1 was married twice,” she repeated. “In St. Louis to Jake Shackleton, and in Placerville, five years after, to Dan Moreau. And I was never divorced from Jake. It was not according to the law. 1 was never Dan’s lawful wife.” The girl sat staring, the meaning of the words slowly penetrating her brain. She was too stunned to speak. Her face was as white as her méther’s. For a tragic moment these two white faces Jjooked at each other. The mother’s, with death waiting to claim her, was void of all stress or emotion. The / daughter's waking to life was rigid with horrified amaze. Propped by her pil again; her sentences with pauses between: “Jake Shackleton married me in St Louis when I was 15. He was soon tired of me. We went to Salt Lake City. He became a Mormon there, and : a second wife. She was a waitress in a hotel. She's his wife now. He brought us both to California twenty- five years ago. On the way across, on the plains of Utah, you were born. He is your father, Mariposa.” She made an effort and sat up. breathing was becoming difficult, but her purpose gave her strength. This was the information that for weeks she had been nerving herself to impart. He is your father,” she repeated. “That's what I wanted to tell you.” Mariposa made no answer, and again she repeated: He is your father. stand? Answer me.’ “Yes—I don’t know. Oh, mother, it's so strange and horrible. And you sit- ting there and looking at me like that, and telling it to me! Oh. mother!” She put her hands over her face f.r an instant, and then dropping them, Jeaned ower on the bed and grasped her mother’s wrists. You're wandering in your mird. It's just some hideous dream you've had in yvour fever. Dearest, tell me it's not true. It can’t be true. Why, think of vou and me and father always together and with no dreadful secret behind us like that. Oh—it can’t be true!” Lucy looked at the papers lying brown and torn on the white quilt. Mariposa's eyes followed the same di- rection, and with a groan her head sank on her arms extended along the bed. Her mother's hand, cold and light, was laid on one of hers, but the dying woman's face was held in its quiet, unstirred apathy, as she spoke again “Jake was hard to me on the trip. He was a hard man and he never loved me. After Bessie came he got to dis- like me. I was always a drag, he said. I couldn’t seem to get well after you were born. Coming over the Sferras we stopped at a cabin. Dan was there with another man, a miner, called Fletcher. That was the first time I ever saw Dan.” Maripesa lifted her head and her eyes fastened on her mother’s face. The in- difference that had held it seemed breaking. A faint smile was on her lips, a light of reminiscence lit its gray pallor. “He was always good to anything that was sick or weak. He was sorry for me. He tried to make Jake stop jonger, so I could get rested. But Jake wouldn't. He said I had to go on. I couldn't, but knew I must, if he said it. We were going to start when Jake said he'd exchange me for the pair of horses the two miners had in the shed. So he left me and took the horses. “Exchanged you for the horses? Left you there sick and alone?” “Yes, Jake and Bessie went on with the horses. I stayed. I was too sick to care.” She made a slight pause, either from weakness, or in an effort to arrange the next part of her story. ‘I lived there with them for 2 month. 1 was sick and they took care of me. Then ome day Fletcher stole all the money and the only horse and never came back. We were alone there then, Dan and 1. T got better. I came to love him more each day. We were snowed it ws, Lucy spoke were short and 100 Her Do you under- in all winter, and we lived as man and wife. In the spring we rode into Hang- town and were married.” She stopped, a look of ineffable sweet- ness passed over her face, and she said in a low voice, as if speaking to her- self: “Oh, that beautiful winter! There is a God, to be s0 good to women who have suffered as I had.” Mariposa sat dumbly regarding her, It was like a frightful nightmare. Everything was strange, the sickroom, the bed with the screen around it, her mother’s face with its hollow eyes and pinched nose. Only the two old dirty papers on the white counterpane seemed to say that this was real. Lucy’s eyes, which had been looking back into that glorified past of love and vouth, returned to her daughter’s face. “But Jake is your father,” she said. “That’s what I had to tell you. He'll be good to you. That was why he wanted to find you and help you.” “Yes,” said Mariposa, dully, “I un- derstand that now; that was why he wanted to help me.” ““He'll be good to you,” went on the low, weak veice, interrupted by quick breaths. “I know Jake. He'll be proud of you. You're handsome and talented, not weak and poor spirited, as 1 was. You're his ohly legitimate child; the others are not; they were born in California. They're Bessie's children, and I was his only real wife. You'll let him take care of you? Oh, Mariposa, my darling, I've told you all this that you might understand and let him take care of you.” She made a last call on her strength and leaned forward. Her dying boay was revivified; all her mother's agony of love appeared on her face. In de- termining to destroy the illusions of her child to secure her future, she had made the one heroic effort of her life. It was done, and for a last moment of relief and triumph she was thrillingly alive. : Maripsoa, in a spasm of despair, threw herself forward on the bed. “Oh, why did you tell me? Why did vou tell me?” she cried. “Why didn't you let me think it was the way it used to be? Why did you tell me?” Lucy laid her hand on the bowed head. “Because I wanted you to understand and let him be your father.” “My father! That man! Oh, no, no!" “You must promise me. Oh, my be- loved child, T couldn’t leave you alone. It seemed as if God had said to me, ‘Diesin peace. - Her father will care for her. I couldn’t go and leave you this way, without a friend. Now I can rest in peace. Promise to let him take care of you. ®romise.” “Oh, mother, don’t ask me. What have you just told me? That he sold you to a stranger for a pair of horses, left you to die in a cabin in the meun- tains! That's not my father. My father was Dan Moreau. 1 can do nothing but hate that other man now.” “Don’t blame him, dear; the pastis over. Forgive him. Forgive me. If I sinned there were excuses for me. had suffered too much. I loved too well.” Her voice suddenly hesitated and broke. A gray pallor ran over her face and a look of terror transfixed her eyes. She straightened her arms out toward her daughter. “Promise,” she gasped, “promise.” With a spring Mariposa snatched the drooping body in her arm8 and cried into the face, settling into cold rigidity: “Yes—yes—I promise! All—anything. Oh, mother, darling, look at me. I promise.” She gently shook the limp form, but it was nerveless, only the head oscil- lated slightly from side to side. “Mother, look at me,” she cried fran- tically. “Look at me, not past me. Come back to me. Speak to me, T promise everything.” But there was no response. Lucy lay, limp and white-lipped, her head loiling back from the support of her daughter’s arm. Her strength was ez- hausted to the last drop. She was un- conscious. The wild figure of Mariposa at the kitchen door summoned Mrs. Brown. Lucy was not dead, but dving. A few moments later Mariposa found herself rushing hatless through the rain for the doctor, and then again, in what seemed a few more minutes, standing scaked and breathless, by her mother’s side. She sat there throughout the night, holding the limp hand and watching for a glimmer of consciousness in the half-shut eyes. It never came. There was no rally from the collapse which followed the mother’s confession. She had lived till this was done. Then, having accom- plished the great action of her life, she had loosed her hold and lét go. Once, Mrs. Brown being absent, Mariposa had leaned down on the pillow and pas- sionately reiterated the assurance that she would give the promise Lucy hed asked. There was a slight quiver of animation in the dying woman's face and she opened her eyes as if startled, but made no other sign of having heard or understood. But Mariposa knew that she had promised. On the evening of the day after her confession Lucy died, slipping away quietly as if in sleep. The death of the simple and unknown lady made no rip- ple on the surface of the city's life. Mrs. Willers and a neighbor or two were Mariposa's sole visitors, and the only flowers contributed to Lucy’s coffin were those sent by the news- paper woman and Barry Essex. The afternoon of the day on which her mother's death was announced, Mari- posa received a package from Jake Shackleton. With it came a short note of condolence, and the offer, kindly and simply worded, of the small sum of momey contained in the package, which, it was hoped, Miss Mareau, for the sake of the writer’s early acquaint- ance with her parents and interest in herself, would accept. The packet con- tained $500 in coin. Mariposa’'s face flamed. The money fell through her fingers and rolled about on the floor. She would have liked to take it, piece by piece, and \ Al (/ o, A V=27 threw it through the window, into the mud of the street. She felt that her horor of Shackleton augmented with every passing moment, gripped her deeper with every memory of her mother's words, and every moment’s perusal of the calm, dead face in its surrounding flowers. But her promise had been given. She picked up the money and put it away. Her promise had been given. Already she was beginning dimly to realize that it would bind and cramp her for the rest of her life. She was too benumbed now fully to grasp its meaning, but she felt feebly that she would be its slave as long as he or she lived. But she had given it. The money lay untouched throughout the next few days, Lucy's simple fu- neral ceremonies being paid for with the proceeds of the sale of the diamond brooch, which Moreau had given her in the early days of their happiness. ITS EFFECT. Flower o' the peach, Death for us all, and his own life for each. —Browning. Jake Shackleton did not come up from San Mateo on Monday, as Mrs. ‘Willers expected, and the first intima- tion he had of Lucy's death was the short notice in the paper. He had come down the stairs early on Tuesday morning into the wide hall, with its doors thrown open to the fra- grant air. With the paper in his hand, he stood in the balcony looking about and inhaling the freshness of the morn- ing. The rain had washed the country clean of every fleck of dust, burnished every leaf, and had called into being blossoms that had been awaiting its summons. From beneath the shade made by the long, gnarled limbs of the live oaks, the perfume of the violets rose delicately, their crowding clusters of leaves a clear green against the pase of the hoary trunks. The air that drifted in from the idle, yellow fields beyond was Impregnated with the breath of, the tar weed—one of the most pungent and impassioned odors nature has man- ufactured in her vast laboratory, char- acteristic scent to rise from the dry, yet fecund grass lands of California. In the perfect, crystalline stillness these mingled perfumes rose like incense to the new day. Shackleton looked about him, the paper in his hand. He had little love for nature, but the tranquil-scented freshness of the hour wrung its tribute of admiration from him. What an irony that the one child he had, worth having gained all this for, should be denied it. Mariposa, thus framed, would have added the last touch to the triumphs of his life, ‘With an explanation of impatience he sat down on the top step, and opening the paper, ran his glance down its col- umns. He had been looking over it for several minutes before the death notice of Lucy struck his eye. It took away .his breath. He read it again, at first not crediting it. He was entirely un- prepared, having merely thought of Luey as “delicate.” Now she was dead. He dropped the paper on his knee and sat staring out into the garden. The news was more of a sheck thaa he could have imagined it would be. Was 1t the lately roused pride in his child that had reawakened some old tenderness for the mother? Or was it that the thought of Lucy, dead, called’ back memories of that shameful past? He sat, staring, till a step on the bel- cony roused him, and turning, he saw his son. Win, though only 23, was of the order of beings who do not look well in the morning. He was slightly built and thin and had a rasped, pink ap- pearance, as though he felt cold. Stories were abroad that Win was dis- sipated, stories, by the way, that were largely, manufactured by himself. He was at that age when a reputation for deviltry has its attractions. In fact, he was amiable, gentle and far toc lack- ing in spirit to be the desperate rake he liked to represent himself. He had a wholesome fear of his father, whose im- patience against him was not concealed by surface politeness as in Maud's case. Standing with his hands in his trousers pockets, his chest hollowed, his red-rimmed eyes half shut behind the pince-nez he always wore, and his slight mustache not sufficient to hide a smile, thd foolishness of which rose from embarrassment, he was not a son to fill a father's heart with pride. “Howdy, Governor,” he said, trying to be easy; then, seeing the paper in his father’s hand, folded back at the death notices, “‘anybody new born, dead, or married this morning?” His voice rasped unbearably on his father's mood. Theé older man gave him a look over his shoulder, with a face that made the boy quail. he said, savagely; ‘‘get in the house and leave me alone. ‘Win turned and entered the house. The foolish smile was still on his lips. Pride kept it there, but at heart he was bitterly wounded. At the foot of the stairs he met his mother, “You'd better not go out there,” he said, with a movement of his head in the direction of his father; “it's as much as your life’s worth. The old man'll bite your nose off if you do.” “Is your father cross?” asked Bessie. “Cross? He oughtn't to be let loose when he’s like that.” “Something in the paper must have upset him,” said Bessie. ‘“He was all right this morning before he came down. Something on the stock mar- ket’s bothered him.” “Maybe so,” said his son, with a cer- tain feeling. “But that's no reason why he should speak to me like a dog. He goes too far when he speaks to me that way. There isn’t a servant in the house would stand it.” He balanced back and forth on his toes and heels, looking down, his face flushed. It would have been hard to say—such was the characterless insig- nificance of his appearance—whether he was really hurt, as a. man would be in +his heart and his pride, or only mo- \ WP AP \ = o R N s AN 28 mentarily stung by a scornful word. Bessie passed him and went out on the balccny. Her husband was still sitting on the steps, the paper in his hand. “What is it, Jake?" she said. “Win says you're cross. Something gone wrong?” “Lucy's dead,” he answered, rising to his feet and handing her the paper. She paled a little as she read the no- tice. Then. raising her eyes, they met his. In this look was their knolwledge of the secret that both had struggled to keep, and that now, at last, was theirs. For the second {ime in a half year, death had stepped in and claimed one of the four whose dives had touched so briefly and so momentously twenty-five years before. 4 “Poor Lucy!” said Bessie, in a low voice. “But they say she ‘was very® happy with Moreau. You can do some- thing for your—for the girl now.” “Yes,"” he sai “I'll think it over. T won't be down to breakfast. Send up some coffee.” He went upstairs and locked himself in his library. He could not understand why the news had affected him so deeply. It seemed to make him feel sick. He did not tell Bessie that he had gone upstairs because he felt too ill and shaken to see any one. All morning he sat in the library, with frowning brows, thinking. At noon he took the train for the city and, socn after its arrival, dispatched to Mariposa the $500. He had no doubt of her accepting it, as it never crossed his mind that Lucy, at the last moment, might have told. . The days that followed her mother's funeral passed to Mariposa like a serieg of gray dreams, dreadful, with an un: familiar sense of wretchedness. The precccupation of her mother’s illness was gone. There were idle hours, when she sat in her rooms and tried to real- ize the full meaning of Lucy’s last words. She would sit motionless, star- ing before her, her heart feeling shriv- eled in her breast. Her life seemed broken to pieces. She shrank from the future, with the impossibilities she had pledged herself to. And the strength and inspiration of the beautiful past were gone. All the memories of that happy childhood and young maiden- hood were blasted. It was natural that the shock and the subsequent brooding should make her view of the subject morbid. The father that she had grown up to regard with reverential tenderness had not been hers. The mother who had been a cherished idol had hidden a dark secret. And she, herself, was an outsider from the home she had so deeply loved—child of a brutal and tyrannical father—originally adopted and cared for out of pity. It was a crucial period in her life. Old ideals were gone, and new ones not yet formed. There seemed only ruins abeut her, and amid these she sought . for something to cling to, and believe in. With secret passion she nursed the tgoutlfl.flquu—cll she had left that had not Been swept away in the deluge of this past week. Fortunately for her, the business calls of the life of a woman left penniless shook her from her state of brooding idleness. The cottage was hers for a month longer, and despite the impover- ished condition of the widow, there was a fair amount of furniture still left in it that was sufficiently valuable to be a bait to the larger dealers. Mariposa found her days varied by contentions with men, who came to stare at the great red lacquer cabinet and investi- gate the interior condition of the mar- quetry sideboard. When the month was up. she was to move to.a small boarding-house, kept by Spaniards called Garcia, that Mrs. Willers, in her varying course, included among her habitats. The Garcias would not object to her piano and practicing, and it was amazingly cheap. Mrs. Willers herself had lived there in one of her periods of eclipse, and knew them to be respecta- ble denizens of a somewhat battered Bohemia. “‘But you're going to be a Bohemian yourself, being a musical genius,” she said cheerfully. “So you won't mind that.” Mariposa did not think she would mind. In the chactic dimness of the dismantled front parlor she looked like a listless goddess who would not mind anything. Mrs. Willers thought her state of dreary apathy curious and spoke of it to Shackleton, whom she now recog- nized as the girl's acknowledged guard- jan. He had listened to her account of Mariposa’s broken condition with ex- pressionless attention. “Isn’t it natural, all things consid- ered, that a girl should be broken- ‘hearted over the death of a’devoted mother? And, as I understand it, Miss Moreau is absolutely alone. She has mno relatives anywhere. It's a pretty bleak outlook.” “That’s true. I never saw a girl left so without connections. But she wor- ries me. She’s so silent, and dull, and unlike herself. Of course, it's been a terrible blow. I'd have thought she'd been more prepared.” ¥ He shrugged his shoulders, stroking his ghort beard with his lean, heavily veined hand. It amused him to see the way Mrs. Willers was quietly pushing him into the position of the girl's sponsor. And at the same time It heightened his opinion of her as a wo- man of capacity and heart. She would be an ideal chaperone and companion for his unprotected daughter. “When she feels better,” he said, “I wish you’d bring her down here again. Don’t bother her until she feels equal to it. But I want to talk to her about Lepine’s ideas for her. I saw him again and he gave me a lot of informa- tion about Pll\'ll and teachers and all the rest of it." Before we make any definite arrangements I'Il have to see her and talk it all over.” Mrs. Willers went back triumphantly to Mariposa to report this conversation. It really seemed to clinch matters. The Bonanza King had instituted himself her guardian and backer. It meant fortune for Mariposa Moreau, the pen- ) niless orphan. To her intense surprise, Mariposa lis- tened to her with a flushed and frown- ing face of indignation. “I won't go,” she said, with sudden violence. “But, my dear!" expostulated Mrs. Willers, “your whole future depends on it. With such an influence to back you as that, your fortune's made. And lis- ten to me, honey, for I know—it's not an easy job for a woman to get on who's alone and as good looking as you are.” “I won't go,” repeated Mariposa, an- gry and obstinate. “But why not, for goodness' sake?" in blank amaze. “What's come over yeu? Is it your mourning? You know your mother’s the last person who'd want you to sit indoors, moping like a snail in a shell, when your future was waiting for you outside the door.” Her promise rose up before Mari- posa’s mental vision and checked the angry reiteration that was on her lips. She turned away, suddenly, tremulous and pale. “Don’t talk about it any more," s answered, “but I can't g0 now haps later on, but not now—I can’t g0 now."” Mrs. Willers shrugged her shoulders, and was wisely silent. Mariposa’s grief was making her unreasonable, that was all. To Shackleton she merely said that the girl was too ill and overwrought to see any one just yet. As soon as she was herself again Mrs. Willers would bring her to The Trumpet office for the interview that was to be the opening of the new era. CHAPTER IX. HOW COULD HE? Man is the hunter; woman is his game, The sleck and shining creatures of the chase We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down. —Tennyson The month of Mariposa’'s tenantry of the cottage was up. It was the last evening there, and she sat ecrouched over a handful of fire that burned in the front parlor grate. The room was half empty, all the superfluous furni- ture having been taken that morning by a Jewish second-hand dealer. In one corner stood huddled such relics as she had chosen to keep, and which ‘would be borne away on the morrow to the Garcias’ boarding-house. The mar- quetry sideboard was gone. It had been sold to a Sutter-street dealer for $25. The red lacquer cabinet, though no longer hers, still remained. It, too, would be carried away to-morrow morning by its new owners. She looked at it with melancholy glances as the fire light found and lost its golden tra- ceries and sent sudden quivering gleams along its scarlet doors. The fire was less a luxury than an eccnomy, to burn the last pieces of coal in the bin. Bending over the dancing flames, Mariposa held her hands open to the blaze, absently looking at their backs. They were fine, capable hands, large and white, with strong wrists and a forearm so round that its swell began half-way between elbow and wrist- bone. Pleased by the warmth that soothed the chill always induced by a scjourn in the front parlor, she pulled up her sleeves and watched the gleam of the fire turn the white skin red. She was sitting thus, when a ring at the beil made her start and hurriedly push her sleeves down. Her visitors were so few that she was almost certain of the identity of this one. For all the griefs of®the last month she was yet a wo- man. She sprang to her feet, and as the steps of the servant sounded in the hall, ran to the large mirror in the cor- ner and patted and pulled her hair to the :(y‘e she thought most becoming. e Rad turned from this and was standing by the fire when Essex en- tered. He had seen her once since her mother’s death, but she had then been so preoccupied with grief that, with a selfish man's hatred of all unpleasant things, he had left her as soon as pos- sible. To-night he saw that she was re- covering, that, physically at least, she was herself again. But he was struck, almost as soon as his eye fell on her, by a change in her. Some influence had been at work to effect a subtile and cu- rious development in her. The simpli- city, the something childish and win- ning that had always seemed so incon- sistent with her stately appearance, was gonme. Mariposa was coming to herself. His heart quickened its beats as he realized she wag handsomer, richer by some inward growth, more a woman than she had been a month ago. He took a seat at the other side of the fire, and the tentative conversa- tion of commonplaces occupied them for a few moments. The silence that had held her in a spell of dread dejec- tion on his former visit was broken. She seemed more than usually talka- tive. In fact, Mariposa was beginning to feel the reaction from the life of grief and seclusion of the last month. She was violently ashamed of the sense of elation that had surged up in her at the sound of Essex’s volce. She strug- gled to hide it, but it lit a light in her eyes, called a color to her cheeks that she could not conceal. The presence of her lover affected her with a sort of embarrassed exultation that she had never experienced before. To hide it she talked rapidly, looking into the fire, to which she still held out her hands. Essex, from the other side of the hearth, watched her. He saw his ar- rival had made her nervous, and it only augmented the sentiment that had been growing in him for months. She began to tell him of her move. “I'm going to-morrow, in the after- noon. It's a queer place, an old house on Hyde street, with a big pepper- tree, the biggest in the city, they say, growing in the front garden. It was once quite a fine house, long ago in the early days, and was built by these peo- ple, the Garcias, when they still had money. Then they lost it all, and now the o¢ld'lady and her son's wife take a few people. as the house is too big for them and they are so poor. Young Mrs. Garcia is a widow. Her husband was killed in the mines by a blast.” A\ A§._. . pause “It sounds picturesque. Do they speak English?” “The senora. that's the old lady, doesn’t. - She has lived here since before the Gringo came, but she can't speak any English at all. The daughter-in- law is an American, a Southerner. She looked very untidy the day 1 went there. I'm afraid I'll be homesick You'll come to see me sometimes, won't you?” There was no coquetry in the remark Her dread of loneliness was all that spoke. Essgx met her eyes, dark and wist- ful, and nodded without speaking. She lcoked back at the fire and again spread her hands to it, palms out “It's —rather a dilapidated sort of place,” she continugd after a mo- ment’s pause, “but perhaps I'll get used to it.” There was distinct pleading for firmation in this. Her voice was slight- ly husky. Essex, however, with that perversity which marked all his treat- ment of her, sald: “Do you think you will? It's difficult for a woman to accommodate herself to such changed conditions—I mean a wo- man of refinement, like you. She continued feebly to make her stand. “But my conditions have changed so much in the last two or three years. 1 ought to be used to it; it's not as if it was the first time. Before my father got sick we were so comfortable. We were rich and had quantities of beau- tiful things like that cabinet And as they have gone, one by one, so we have come down bit by bit, till I am left like this.” She made a gesture to include the empty room and turned back to the fire “But you won't stay like this," said, throwing a glance over the bare walls. “Don’t you think so?”’ she said, look- ing into the fire with dejected “You're kind to try to cheer me up “You can be happy, protected and cared for, with your life full of sun- shine and joy— He stopped. Every step he took was of moment, and he was not the type of man to forgive himself a mistake. Mariposa was looking at him, frowning eyes. slightly. “How do you mean?”’ she said “With my voice?” No,” he answered, in a tone that suddenly thrilled with meaning, “with me."” That quivering pause which falls be- tween a man and woman when the words that will link or sever them for life are to be spoken, held the room. Mariposa felt the terrified desire to ar- rest -the coming words that is the maiden’s last instinctive stand for her liberty. But her brain was confused, and her heart beat like a hamm “With me,” Essex repeated, a grew unbearable. “Is ther happiness for you in that thought?” She made no answer, and suddenly he moved his chair close to her side. She felt his eyes fastened on her and kept hers on the fire. Her other offers of marriage had not been accomplished with this stifling sense of discomfort. “I've thought,” his deep voice went on, “that you cared for me—a little. I've watched, I've despended But lately—lately—" he ieaned toward her and lowered his voice— “I've hoped.” She still made no answer. It seemed to her none was necessary or possible. “Do you care?” he said, softly. She breathed a “yes” that only ear of love could have heard. ‘‘Mariposa, dearest, do you mean it?” He leaned over her and laid his hand on hers. His voice was husky and his hand trembling. To the extent 'that was in him he loved this woman. “Do you love me?”" he whispered. The “yes” was even fainter this time. He raised the hand he held to his breast and tried to draw her into his arms. She resisted, and turned on him a pale face, where emotions, never stirred before, were quivering. She was moved to the bottom of her soul. Something in her face made him shrink a little. With her hand against his breast she gave him the beautiful look of a wo- man’s first sense of her surrender. He stifled the sudden twinge of his con- science and again tried to draw her close to him. But she held him off with the hand on his breast and said—as thousands of girls say every year: “Do you really love me?” “More than the whole world,” he an- swered glibly, but with the roughened voice of real feeling. “Why?” she said with a tremulous smile, “why should you?” “Because you are you.” “But I'm just a small insignificant person here, without any relations, and poor, so poor.” “Those things don’t matter when a man loves a woman. It's you I want, not anything you might have or might be.” “But you're so clever and have lived everywhere and seen everything, and I'm so—so countrified and stupid.” “You're Mariposa. That’s enough for me.” “All T can bring you for my portion is my heart.” “And that's all I want.” “You love me enough to marry me?” His eyes that had been looking ar- dently into her face, shifted. “I love you enough to be a fool about you. Does that please you?” Her murmured answer was lost in the first kiss of love that had ever been pressed on her lips. She drew back from it, pale and thrilled, not abashed, but looking at her lover with eyes be- fore which his drooped. It was a sa- cred moment to her. “How wonderful,” she whispered, “that you should care for me." the no the “It would be more wonderful if I hadn’t.” “And that you came now, when everything was so dark and lonely. You don’'t know how horribly lonely I felt this evening, thinking of leaving here to-morrow and going among strangers.” . (Continued Next Sunday.)