LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 923, 9 June 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A WOMAN'S VICTORY. (Danebury Netvs.) A pale, desperate face, whose dark eyes shone like shooting fires: red lips, compressed to a mere line of color ; an er ct, rigid figure, whose cold hands held an open r oreign-looking letter the postman had just delivered. The letter read :

' Rome, Dec. 27th, 1860

' Mr Brooke Power -court's compliments to the lady who subscribes herself Mr Rupert Powerscourt's wife, and begs both to discredit the statement, and to refuse the required assistance.'

And the pale, rigid woman—girl she looked, and wa=i as year* went —was Ellinor Powerscourt, the seven months' widow of the handsome, profligate fellow she had married one fated day when his love pleadings and his magnificent beauty had appealed all too strongly to her lonely heart. Tt had been quite a romance—Rupert Powerscourt's and Ellinor Walton's courtship. He had seen her, been smitten with her wonderful beauty, fallen immeasurably in love with her, and in a moment of what he called 'weakness,' and afterwards cursed, he made her his wife; and for a few brief weeks, until his fancy wss sated, and while inconstancy was in reserve, Ellinor Walton had been in a heaven delight, and laughed in her own happy heart at the warnings friends had given her of Eupert Powerscourt's reputation as a gambler, a rone, and thanked heaven that it had given her her darling for her very own. Three months afterwards, if Ellinor had not been as proud as she was loyal and true, she would have told a different story—of neglect, of sneers, of unhesitatingly-ex-pressed regrets that he—her husband—had ever seen her. Three months after that came heart-ach-ings and anguishful awakening to the bitter truth that friends had not warned her untruthfully ; and Ellinor knew, to her agony and shame, that her husband was all and more than she had so confidently declared he was not.

And then he was killed with awful suddenness. He left her at eleven o'clock of a bright autumn morning, with words of cursing on his handsome lips, because she had ventured to tell him people said his horse was fit for no man to ride who valued his life ; and before midday they carried him to her, dead. She was not eighteen years old then—not morelthan a month or so over seventeen—and a widow- the widow of a man who had spent the large income given him by a wealthy, indulgent old father, whose own young days had been very like his youngest sod's. So when her dead was laid for ever away, and the expenses paid, and the bills that came swarming in settled, Ellinor found thee were not fifty pounds left for her to begin life with. And then she realised that it would have been best had she so ordered her plans that her husband's expenses should have been paid by his people—his proud old family- from whom she was daily expecting advice as to the final disposition of the youngest son's remains. She waited weeks for an answer to her modest letter, in which she gave all the sad particulars, the while using every effort to obtain employment, and living in such vivid contrast to the home she had revelled in for such a brief time.

But no letter ever came, and she never knew that the Powerscourts had sent a messenger over at once, who made all his own arrangements, utterly ignoring Ellinor, or Ellinor's rights. Bad grew worse. Ellinor could find no work, and her last sovereign was in her pocket-book; then, in a sudden inspiration of despair, she wrote a long, urgent letter to the brother-in-law she had never seen, telling him her wants and needs, and begging him to assist her for his brother's sake, if not for humanity's sake.

And the answer came—the brief, formal note we have transcribed, containing the injury, the implied insult, the stinging sneer that fairly curdled her blood. The minutes rolled on and on, as she sat there holding the letter, that seemed the more pointed in its impertinent insolence in. that it was written in pencil—as though it were of too infinitely small importance to be considered more than a mere pessing memorandum.

It was a desperate vigil for her young heart to keep ; but she arose from it nerved to new effort by the letter that had not crossed the ocean without accomplishing more than was intended.

She took her wedding and engagement rings to which she had hitherto clung with a feeling of sacred sentiment, and sold them —sold their heavy, massive gold, and light, sparkling diamonds, and with the sum thus realised in her pocketbook, side by side, with the letter Brooke Powerscourt had sent her, Ellinor went out afresh into the world, with every nerve strained to a tension that would either kill her or conquer Fate. ' And I will conquer Fate !' She registered her vow away down in her heart as she went on her way. And a few friends wondered at first what had become of Powerscourt's widow ; then, before a year had gone, she was utterly forgotten, utterly uncared for. For such is life ! * * * * *

' Mademoiselle Lenore, eh ? Well, Ormonde, I'll take a box with you to see this new pr'ma donna you fellows have done nothing but rave about since I returned from abroad.'

Brooke Powerscourt removed his cigar to get a fresh look at the photograph of ' the divine Lenore' that graced his friend Ormonde's chimneypiece, in common with a few hundred or more similar chimneypieces. Ormonde watched Powerscourt's admiration.

' How does she strike you, Powerscourt ? Dou you ever remember to have seen finer eyes ? It isn't even handsome eyes that look well in a photograph.' ' Remarkably handsome, Ormonde. If she sings as Mignon as well as she looks in her likeness, there is a treat in store for me at least. I presume you fellows have heard her often.' (To he continued.)

After preaching a tedious sermon on happiness, during which he enumerated the various classes of happy persons, a minister of a Highland church asked one of the elders what he thought of the ' discourse. "You omitted ono large class of the happy," replied the elder—" they who escaped yom- sermon."