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CHAPTER XXL
ING had been gone from Sylvia’s room
but a few’ minutes w r hen Faith re-entered
it. She was pale and a shadow' of disap
pointment rested on her face.
This did not prevent her answering
Sylvia’s shy look of inquiry with a smile
and a kiss of congratulation.
“Yes I know' about it dear. I met Mr.
King and he told me.”
K
“You are not sorry, Faith?”
“No, lam quite glad for your sake. I admire and
like Mr. King. 1 do not doubt that you will be hap
pier with him than you could have been with poor
Claude.”
“Poor Claude! Oh, Faith, is it this that troubles
you? You think my engagement will give pain to
Claude? Then be troubled no more, dear. Claude
does not care for me. Oh, Faith, is it possible you
have never suspected why he came here so often?”
“He came to see you.”
“No, no. He never asked for me; he rarely
spoke to me. It was Anabel. Oh, Faith, he is in
fatuated with her!”
“Sylvia!”
Trembling violently, Faith caught at a chair for
support. She stood looking at her friend in help
less dismay.
“And you never told me!' she breathed at last.
“Dear Faith you had so much to trouble you;
I hated to add to your burdens. I kept hoping it
would die out—like so many of Claude’s fancies.
But it did not. She has made him her slave. 1
talked to him more than once. He turned from me
scornfully. After that he seldom spoke to me. I
wish now I had told you long ago. He might have
listened to you.”
“He will listen to me yet,” said Faith. “He
must! Ah, I understand it all nosv —the sad change
in him. I thought it was because of you, Sylvia. I
thought there was nothing I could do to help him
•—that time must heal his disappointment—l did
not dream it was this sinful infatuation. It must
be broken at once —I will help him—l will get him to
go away. 1 will talk to him this day!”
She did talk to him. She followed him that even
ing at sunset when he went to take a solitary walk.
She found him sauntering moodily along the shore
of Mystic Lake. She put her hand through his
arm and began to talk to him. Soon, with a
woman’s subtle tact, she had brought up the subject
that occupied her thoughts. She was sympathetic
but firm. His friendship with Anabel had gone too
far. It would be best for him, best for her, that
the intimacy should come to an end.
He listened to all she said in silence. When she
ended he turned upon her a look that went to her
heart. It was the look of one who feels himself
helplessly in the toils.
“It is too late,” he said. “I love Anabel. I can
not give her up!”
The few curt, words, the set look on his pale, un
happy face, startled his sister. She had not dreamed
that Anabel’s influence over him had gone as far as
this. She threw' her arms around his neck.
“Oh, Claude, think of what you are saying! You
must give her up. Think what will be the end of
your association with her! What can it be but sor
row shame and disgrace to her, dishonor to you,
treachery to her husband. Oh, Claude, my darling
brother, I implore you to let this stop at once!”
His gloomy face did not relax. He put her from
him gently.
“I will do nothing to bring disgrace upon her,”
he said; “but I can stop loving her only when my
heart stops beating.”
“You think so now because you are so young
and emotional. Your nature is not disciplined. But
if you were to go away—Oh, Claude, you must go
away. I have saved some of my school money; take
it, dear; I give it to you gladly. Take it and go
away.”
He shook his head,
“She w r ould not let me go,” he said. “She has
TRIAL AND TRIUMTH
A Story of the Conflict of Good and ILbil —"By Nary TL. Bryan.
Th* Ciolcion Age for November 17, 1910;
told me she would die if I left her here. She is the
most solitary woman in the world. Her home is no
home to her. Sylvia dislikes her. Her husband
does everything he can for her, but he does not love
her. His heart is elsewhere, and she knows it. The
people here do not like her, she is so different from
them. She has no friend but me. No, I can not
desert her. I will not leave her unless she sends
me away.”
. "And has her husband no rights? Oh, Claude,
some day he will make you feel that he has rights
which you have outraged. He is slow to anger,
slow' to suspect, but when he does find out the.
w’rong you are doing him, he —”
“I am doing him no wrong. I have not estranged
her heart from him, for it was never his. And she
knows w r ell that your little finger is dearer to him
than her whole body.”
“It is false—oh, it is false!" cried Faith, the
blood rushing in a burning tide to her face. “He
does care for her. He would be happy with her if
she would be satisfied with his honest love. Don’t
blind yourself by any such sophistries, my brother.
Don’t try to excuse your sin, your treachery, in any
such way.”
Her reason, her prayers, had little seeming effect.
Presently his mood lightened. He kissed her and
laughed at her fears. He begged her to let him
alone.
“You know', father says I am not responsible,”
he declared. “I am just a bit of thistle-down afloat
on the w'inds of fate. I must drift where l am
borne.”
She left him with a heavy heart. That night she
wrote to Anabel —a long, earnest letter, in which
she poured out her heart. She w r arned her that
such a close friendship as hers and Claude’s must
soon occasion scandal. This would be brought to
the ears of her husband. Easy-tempered and un
suspecting though he was, when his anger was
roused, he w'as stern and determined. She begged
her to bew'are how she lost his confidence. Then
she appealed to her womanly compassion in behalf
of Claude. She told her of his peculiar nature, his
emotional intensity, his delicate, nervous constitu
tion, his tendency to go to extremes in all he felt or
did. She implored her to send him away from her.
“He will go if you will it so,” she wrote. “For
his sake, for your ow T n sake, 1 entreat you to per
suade —yes, to command him to go. Unless you
do, I foresee the most unhappy results.”
Anabel lead this letter, flushing with shame,
smarting under the sense of rebuke from the girl
her husband had loved. But she felt the rebuke
was just. She felt the truth of the words that
pictured the w'reck she was making of Claude’s
young life. She felt the force of the warnings as to
the consequences of braving scandal and risking
her husband’s anger.
“Yes, it must end. I will tell him he must go
away,” she said.
Then she burned the letter, and its impressions
faded. They became less strong than her desire to
keep Claude with her. She could not give up this
one delicious cup that slaked her thirst for conquest
and adulation.
So matters w'ent on as before, except that Anabel
became more cautious. She used more arts to
blind uer husband and to prevent the little w'orld of
Glenwood from prying into the secrets of her do
mestic life.
CHAPTER XXII.
A crisis came at last. One day the eyes of Charley
Glenn were opened to the drama that had been going
on in his home for months.
Vague hints of something wrong had reached
his ears through outside gossip, and he had for a
long time regarded the intimate friendship between
his wife and young Harland with a feeling of irrita
tion, but be had not suspected anything more than
that Anabel was amusing herself by a flirtation with
the young poet.
The revelation came suddenly.
He had gone off one day on horseback as usual to
look after the w'ork being done on the cottages he
was having built to rent or sell. He felt indisposed,
and returned in an hour. Going up stairs he lay
down on a lounge in a room that adjoined his wife’s
little boudoir.
He had seen Anabel as he entered the house. She
was in the yard standing on tip-toe under a maple
tree trying to reach and pull down one of its limbs
to get a flowering spray of the yellow jessamine
vine that almost hid the tree with its foliage. Site
did not see him, and he was about to go to her as
sistance when he heard the gate click and saw
Claude enter t lie yard and join her.
“I am trying to get this lovely cluster to copy it
on your cuff box,” lie heard her say. He turned off,
chilled and unhappy and went, up stairs.
The jessamine spray was secured, and a few
minutes later, Anabel, seated in her boudior, was
beginning to copy it on the white enameled lid of a
cuff box intended for Claude, while he leaned over
her drooped shoulder his face brushing the tendrils
of her hair.
Presently, Sylvia, who sat on the piazza sewung
heard the lightly touched chords of the cottage
piano, which Charley had given Anabel on hbr birth
day, she having expressed herself dissatisfied with
the rich-toned instrument that had belonged to
Sylvia’s mother. He played a waltz, then the accom
paniment of a song of his own composition. The
impassioned words and delicately sensuous air had
been inspired by Anabel. He sang the last, verse:
Oh, would 1 were only a beautiful Dream,
I’d seek you out—l never could miss you,
While you slept, I’d come on a stray moonbeam,
And, would it be wrong to kiss you?
The song ceased. There was silence throughout
the house, through whose wide halls the perfumed
air was blowing. Suddenly the stillness was broken
by a sound as though a heavy body had been dashed
against the wall, then a woman’s startled cry and a
man’s stern voice, in a burst of indignant anger and
contempt. Then a door slammed and Claude ran
down stairs and walked hurriedly past her and out
of the house.
A moment later Charley came out on the piazza.
Sylvia glanced up at him fearfully. His face was
white and stern. He came up to her and said
with forced calmness:
“l have forbidden Claude Harland to enter this
house. Please see that he is never admitted here.”
He went away and did not return until night. He
did not ask for his wife. He drank a cup of tea
that Sylvia brought him and went to his father’s
room. Sylvia had told him that the old doctor was
ailing, and he had asked anxiously:
“Does he know anything of what happened?”
“I don’t think he does.” she answered.
“I am thankful for once that he is hard of hearing.
Poor old father. We must keep this trouble from
him. He must not suspect that anything is wrong.
I have noticed him watching me closely and I’ve
always tried to seem cheerful when he was by.”
Claude respected the anger if not the rights of
Anabel’s husband His visits to the house ceased
entirely. But he did not cease to see Anabel. They
had opportunities to meet outside. Anabel took
solitary walks or horseback rides almost every day.
Sylvia’s first out door trip after her illness was a
drive with Faith in the time scarred but comfortable
Harland barouche, behind old Selim, still a spirited
trotter, though he had seen his best days.
Faith had given up her summer school after her
father suffered the stroke of paralysis from which he
was now partially recovered, though still helpless in
a measure and more exacting than ever. On this
bright September afternoon an old neighbor was
sitting with him, while Faith enjoyed the rare pleas
ure of an outing with Sylvia.
They drove to Glen wood and through the residence
part of the town then returning took their way
through the picturesque suburb of Twin Lakes and
noted the improvements that had been made in the
new summer resort, the pretty cottages, the smooth
(Continued on Page 15.)
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