LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 800, 15 January 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ANNE. ( Concluded.') During an interval of silence, amid| the general bustle and clatter of the dinner, for the two girls who waited (after their own fashion) had both run to carry away the fish and bring in the meat, Lady Knight looked across the table to put a question to Mr Angerstyne. ‘ How is your wife ? The silence dropped to a dead stillness. He appeared not to hear, ‘ How is your wife, Henry Angerstyne? (Have you seen her lately ?’ r He could not make believe to bo deaf any longer, and answered with angry curtnes.s.

‘ N"o, I have not. She is all right, I sup.

pose.’ By the way the whole table stared, you, might have thought a bombshell had fallen. Miss Diana sat with her mouth open in sheer amazement.

‘ Are you really married, Mr Angerstyne V ‘Of course he is married,’ said Lady Knight. ‘ All the world knows that. His wife is my cousin. I saw her at Lowestoft a few weeks ago, Henry. She was looking prettier than ever.’ * Ah, Mr Angerstyne, how sly you were, not to tell us I’ cried Mrs Lewis, playfully shaking her fan at him. ‘ You Oh, goodness me!’

A loud crash ! Jenny the maid had dropped a hot vegetable dish on the floor, scattering the pieces and spilling the peas; and followed it up with a shriek and a scream. That took off the attention; and Mr Angerstyne, coolly eating away at his bread, turned to make some passing remark to Anne.

But the words were left unspoken. No ghost ever seen, in cloisters or out of them, was whiter than she. Lips and fingers were alike trembling. ‘You should be more careful, Jenny!’ he called out in a tone of authority. * Ladies dont’t care to be startled in this way.’ Just as though Anne had turned white from the clatter of the broken dish.

Well, it had been a dreadful revelation for her. All the sunshine of this world seemed to have gone out for ever; to have left nothing behind it but a misty darkness, Rallying her pride and her courage, she went on with her dinner, as the others did. Her head was throbbing, her brain burning; her mind had turned to chaos. She heard them making arrangements to go on a picnic party to Croome Woods on the morrow; not in the least understanding what was said or planned. * You did surprise us!’ observed Mrs Lewis to Lady Knight, when they were in the drawing room after, and Mr Angerstyne had gone out with his letters. * What could have been his motive for allowing us to think him a bachelor ?’

‘A dislike to mention her name,’replied Lady Knight, candidly. * That was it, I expect. He married her for her pretty face, and then found out what a goose she was. So they did not get on together. She goes her way and he goes his ; now and then they meet for a week or two, but it’s not often.’

* What a very unsatisfactory state of things !’ cried Miss Dinah, who was handing round the cups of coffee herself for tear of another upset. ‘ls it her fault or his ?’ * Faults on both sides,’ said Lady Knight; who had an abrupt way of speaking and was as poor a church mouse. * She has a fearfully affronting temper of her own; those women with dolls’ faces sometimes have; and he was not so forbearing as he might have been. Any way, that is the state of affairs between Mr and Mrs Angerstyne ; and, apart from it, there’s no scandal or reproach attaching to either of them. ’ Anne, sitting in a quiet corner, listened to all this mechanically. What mattered the details to her?—the broad fact had been enough. The hum of conversation was going on all around; her father, looking somewhat the better for his dinner, was playing at backgammon with Tom Lake. She saw nothing, knew nothing, until Mr Angerstyne dropped into the seat beside her. ‘ Shall you join this expedition to Croome to-morrow, Anne!’

Julia and Fanny were thumping over a duet, pedal down, and Anne barely caught the low-spoken words. ‘ I do not know,’ she answered after a brief pause. ‘My head aches.’ ‘ I don’t much care about it myself ; rather the opposite. I shall certainly not go if you don’t.’

Why ! he was speaking to her just as nothing had occurred. If anything could have added to her sense of shame and misery, it was this. It sounded like an insult, arousing all the spirit she possessed: her whole nature rose in rebellion against this line of conduct.

‘ Why have you been talking to me these many weeks as you have been doing, Mr Angerstyne ?’ she asked in her straightforward simplicity, turning her face to his. ‘ There has been no harm in it,’ he answered.

‘ Harm !’ she repeated from her wrung heart. ‘ Perhaps not to you. There has been at least no good in it. ’ ‘ If you only knew what an interval of pleasantness it has been for me, Anne ! Almost deluded me into forgetting my odious chains and fetters.’

‘ Would a gentleman have so amused himself, Mr Angerstyne ?’

But she gave him no opportunity of reply. Rising from her seat, and drawing her slight form to its full height, she looked into his face steadily, knowing not perhaps how much of scorn and reproach her gaze betrayed, and crossed the room to sit down by her father. Once after that she caught his eye : caught the expression of sorrow, of rerepentance, of deep commiseration that shone in every line of his face —for she could not altogether hide the pain seated in her own. And later, amid the bustle of the general good-nights, she found her hand pressed within his, and heard his whispered, contrite prayer :

‘ Forgive me, Anne : forgive me I’ She lay awake all night, resolving to be brave, to make no sign ; praying heaven to help her bear the anguish of her solelystricken heart, and not to let the blow quite kill her. But she would feel it during the rest of her life

And before the house was well up in th e morning, a messenger arrived post hast® from Malvern, to summon Mr Angerstyne to his aunt’s dying bed. He told Mias Dinah, when he shook hands with her at parting, that she might as well send his traps after him, if she would be so kind, as he thought he should not return to Worcester again. And that was the ending of Anne Lewis’s love. Not a very uncommon end people say. But she had been hardly dealt by. And I am very sorry nob to be able to get in the end before next month. Johnny Ludlow.