LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 549, 22 March 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE CLYTIE. (Concluded.) ' Oh, what have you done !' cried Marian as she sprang forward, too late to save her favourite. The tears were in her eyes as she picked up the broken fragments; and she looked reproachfully at her friend, unable, in her distress, to believe that she had not wilfully carried out her intention. ' I am so grieved !' said Amy with genuine vexation at the accident which pained Marian so visibfy. ' Indeed I was not in earnest about breaking it. I will get you another in Parian ; this was only plaster of Paris.'

'Ah ! It would never be the same,' she sighed. ' This one has been my companion since the first hour of my sorrow, and I have found strength in her companionship. Poor Clytie ! No, Amy, no other model shall ever take her place.' ' I am so sorry. Still, if the spell be only broken, how I shall rejoice; I shall have done poor Blakeney a good turn, for which he will always bless me,'said Amy, smiling. ' You are adding insult to injury,' replied Marian sadly. 'Come; it is time to dress for dinner ; the Nugents dine with us.' And her hands were full of the broken pieces of the Clytie as she was leaving. ' What are you going to do with them ?' ' Bury them in a silken shroud in my drawer.' ' Was there ever such infatuation as youis, Marian ! You have earned the name of Paithfull with reference to the owner, and might inscribe it on your tablets without any permission of his.' Amy ! hush. His name has never passed my lips since that day.' ' Never mind; the spell is broken at last, and there is hope once more for others.'

As it was only a family party, Marian, who had been indulging in some private grieving over the remains of her Clytie, was the last to appear. ' I've got some news for you,' greeted her on entering the drawing-room, from her cousin Harry. ' I had a letter just as I came out—from whom do you think V

' How can I tell, Harry ?' ' Guess.' ' Impossible; you have such a host of friends.

' iNo,' I don't suppose you ever will guess, for I had almost forgotten him. I thought lie Avas dead; I have not heard from him since In left us five years ago. You know now whom I mean—Faithfull - he is in England.' There was an exclamation of surprise from all in the room but Marian, through whose frame the announcement passed like an electric shock, although she had sufficient presence of mind to listen passively. ' And he sent me the oddest piece of news in the world —that his wife is dead ! I never knew he had a wife before.'

' Poor man,' said Mrs Elton sympathetically. • Poor man ! you may well say, when you hear the rest of the story. It seems he was married privately, some eight years ago ,in Italy, and that his wife went out of her mind almost immediately after their marriage.' ' Then he must have been a married man all the time ha was with us !' exclaimed Mrs

Elton with dismay, not unmixed with thankfulness. ' How very extraordinary, not to say wrong of him, not to have told us.' It is so dangerous when married men pass themselves off as bachelors; they are nothing less than wolves in the fold, to my mind. Only think, if some of you girls had fallen in love with him !'

' Well, I suppose he twisted to not making his attentions pointed enough to raise any question of that kind,' said Mr Nugent} ' and I can quite understand his not caring to talk about or publish such a painful fact of his life, especially as his marriage, it seems, was a secret one. Men, as a rule, don't like condolence on such events.'

' I suppose not,' said Mrs Elton, who, perceiving that her fold had escaped damage from such a calamity as might have overtaken it, was ready to be magnanimous towards the culprit, by admitting the excuses in his favour; and was about to let the subject drop, when Mr Nugent continued : 'He seems not to have forgotten the time he was with us, for he makes minute inquiries after every one, and Avants to know who Miss Elton married.'

' Indeed, you can tell him, with my compliments, that Miss Elton has been very remiss on that point,' said her mother, smiling ; while Marian, hardly knowing how she endured it all, remained silent, struggling with the faintness such strange tidings produced. Amy, who alone saw and knew what she was suffering, came to her rescue at last by pretending she had forgotten something. As she was about to leave the room, she beckoned Marian to follow her.

' Bless you for this !' cried Marian, as soon as the door was closed. Rushing up to her room, she fought with her agitation until restored to calmness, and she could go among them again as though nothing special had occurred.

A week later, and Harry "Nugent came one morning to tell her that Faithfull had accepted an invitation to stay with them. 'He begged particularly to be remembered to you Marian, and expressed great surprise at hearing you were not married.' To paint her feelings as her cousin thus brusquely touched upon her most cherished secret is not possible. She blushed crimson, and begged him to desist, as he rallied her upon what ho te 1 mod ' her strange infatuation for single blessedness.' Mean while, in her heart, the sickness of deferred hope was blossoming into a tree of life. But for what? she asked herself. For nothing but the bitterness of a greater disappointment, perhaps; to find that she was as powerless to win him in his freedom, as his honor forbade him to be won in his bondage. The thought of how, and where, she would first meet him, gave her uneasiness. What would he say ? Would her tell-face betray her, or had the years which had passed brought her the power she had before lacked. What days and hours of suspense, that fled all too quickly, and yet seemed interminable through her mingled sensations of hope and dread, which longed for, yet dreaded, the hour of meeting. It was some days before the one fixed for his arrival, that she was startled one morning by having his card put into her hand by servant, who summoned her to the drawing-room. She scarcely knew how she ever reached or entered the room ; she can only think that she must have turned deadly pale on seeing him. and that he read on her face the history of her faithful heart, which had been true to him throughout the years ; for with • out being able to remember how it happened she found herself in his arms sobbing ou" her welcome.

'Thank God, you read me rightly, Marian,' he murmured, as soon as the first outburst of feeling permitted him to speak. ' Your heart must have told you intuitively, in years gone by, that, had I dared, 1 would placlly have returned the love I saw was mine ; but not for worlds would I, at that or any time, have wounded your self-respecfc and sense of honour, by allowing you to know that you had given your heart to one whom it is counted a wrong to love. I judged it better, therefore, by my coolness, to wean, or even repulse you —though in so doing I left myself open to the pain of being charged with want of feeling and heartlessness—rather than leave you the double suffering of finding that you were beloved by one who was powerless to claim you. You knr>w,fl think from Nugent, one portion of my story ; I will tell you the rest. ' When in Italy I married without the knowledge, and therefore without the consent of my family (from whom I wished to keep it secret), a lovely girl for her beauty, and found her temper, alas ! owing to the latent seeda of madness, execrable. We had not been married very long before the disease became developed, and she was pro uounced by the ablest doctors incurable. The passion her beauty inspired, her infected brain and temperament quickly exhausted, until I had soon no feeling for her but one of great pity, while I endeavoured to surround her with every cate and attention that means could procure ; but the love and companionship Avhich is bound up in that mosb sacred word wife was gone for ever. ' I left her under medical care, and strove to forget my misfortunes, and avoid all questioning on the part of my family, by travelling ; but it was not until I came to England and met you, that I knew how doomed was my life. May you never know what I suffered when I used to watch you pleading silently, with eloquent dumbness, for the affection I loved you far too well to declare ; for I determined that no shade of dishonour should ever trouble the heart I had learned to reverence above all others on earth. But as soon as I was free, Marian, my thoughts were for you. My first visit, on hearing from Nugent, is to you, to see if your heart is still, as I prayed it might be, all my own; and, ah ! I have been well rewarded ; for this meeting more then compensates tor years of sorrow—And Clytie ? I have not forgotten her.' Broken,' she whispered 'on the very day I heard of you again. She kept me faithful to my sun-god, and vanished only on his return.

' When he came, to gather the rich blossom of your love, and wear it on his heart for ever.'