LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 827, 15 February 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ONCE, AND A LIFETIME,

£ Agnes !’

Part I.

The girl addressed started, and glanced quickly towards the corner of the room from which the weary plaintive voice proceeded. ‘ Bert, I had no notion yon were there. This letter is such an important one that it has engrossed my attention.’ ‘And why, pray, should you be so particular about a commonplace congratulation to Miss Gascoigne ?’ * She is Oswald’s betrothed. Is not that fact all-sufficient to make everything connected with her important to all of us ?’ * I do not see it!’

Agnes threw him a reproachful look, then she bent again over her task, and silence reigned in the room; a silence unbroken save by the movement of her pen across the paper and the soft swaying of some green boughs that drooped before the open window.

A few errant gleams of sunshine found admittance through the jalousies, and danced and flickered about—some on the pictured walls and some on the carpet—as the summer breeze capriciously tossed the rustling leaves outside.’

One of the golden intruders fell across Agnes’s white dress, and seemed to linger tenderly on the slim fingers as she made a final flourish at the end of the page and pushed the letter impatiently away from her. When she lifted up her face it looked very wan and pale; yet even with such disadvantages the yellow sunbeams might have travelled far and wide before they found a sweeter and lovelier face on which to rest. The tints of that face were as stainless of colour as marble; the features were delicate and exquisitely chiselled; the eyes large, dark, and shy, like an antelope’s; and the hair of burnished brown that is the rarest known to nature.

But the revelation of this marvellous beauty of hers has yet to come to Agues Olive.

As she stood up, pushing her masses of hair carelessly back, and looked into the opposite mirror, she knew of coui'se that she was beautiful. But she leilisei no more than tfco merest child what a potent power

in this planet of ours—a power setting at defiance all other powers—such beauty could be made.

‘ Shall I read to you, Bert ? ’ she asked kindly. ‘No, it is too hot for reading ; I want to be idle while you talk.’ Agnes went up towards him a little slowly, her lagging steps and the faintest contraction on her brow indicating that she wonld have preferred solitude. But she forced a smile to her lip as she leaned over a sofa on which Bert lay, propped up by cushions, with his lids half closed.

‘ Here I am,’ she answered gently. ‘ Sit down there; I want to look at you,' he ordered, in a tone that was a curious mixture of imperiousness and pleading. The girl obeyed without demur, and returned the gaze that he fixed on her. Yet this was no trifling thing t 6 do, for manypeople found Bertram Barclay’s glance exceedingly hard to meet—people especially who had aught to conceal always waxed uncomfortable when those dear keen hazel eyes rested on them, eyes that looked as if they could read not only the face, but the heart and mind as well. They were full of intellect, full of satirical humour; but only rarely they showed up a rare and tender beauty. Bert had been a cripple since earliest childhood. But for this misfortune he might have achieved ‘anything,’ every one said, and his parents felt the failure so bitterly that it had almost weaned their affection from him. Never a lack of kindness, never a want of consideration or care, but always a want of that golden sympathy without which human hearts shrivel, or become stone, or like unto dust beneath our feet.

Into this wretched state, Bert Barclay had been rapidly drifting, when an influence that saved him entered his life. He was fifteen when a sister of his father died, leaving an orphan. The child was taken at once as a member of the Barclay household, and Agnes Clive found her refuge a pleasant and luxurious one, while she became the fast friend and companion of her cousin Bert,

The affection between the two was singularly touching in its depth and intensity. For five years they had shared feelings in common, until of late a slight cloud of reserve had arisen which Bert was plainly determined to dissipate if possible. ‘Agues,’he cried abruptly, ‘ what is the use of your trying to hide from me how much you are suffering ? ’ She smiled; it was not a radiant smile, neither was it a very sad one. ‘ Not suffering so very much, Bert, dear,’ she answered gently; ‘ and in a little while I daresay I shall suffer less. Time is a wonderful physician, you know.’

‘To think that a brother of mine should be the cause of pain to you,’ he said bitterly; and as he spoke there was no tender beauty to be found in his eyes—they wore a hard, cold, almost cruel expression. ‘Please do not blame Oswald too much,’ she answered half piteously, half contemptuously. *He was always rather weak, and caught by new faces at once. Then again it would be very hard if just a few words of affection could bind him down to me whether he would or no. He went into the world and forgot even that he had uttered them. I remained here and remembered them too well—that is all.’

(To le continued.')