LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1040, 25 October 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ONE WOMAN'S TREACHERY.

" Argossy."

(Concluded.) With the last words Dora turned away, passed into the grounds, and ran swiftly home. But not very long had Miss Lawrence reached her father's house, before Dora was shown into her room. Pale, wildeyed, a shawl wrapped about her, Dora putdown a letter. A hasty, blotted, fiercely - written letter ; a letter written in that passionate hour—oh, how cruelly, and likely, after it was received, to put all the wide world between her and her lover. For when girls are stung into madness, they do all kinds of incomprehensible things, never sparing those who have injured them. *ltis my renouncement!' Dora panted. ' I thought I would bring it to you, and you would send it to him, as you know where he is gone. Bid him never answer it. Let him never in honour speak to me again—never look at me. Fare you well, Miss Lawrence. I wish you both well.' Mr Richard Lawrence did not do his work by halves. In spite of Mr Lawrence's gout and his confinement to the counting-house, he found time to run down to Liverpool and talk over some arrangements with Dean Hastings. And the very next day Richborough heard that Mr Hastings had sailed for the West Indies. Some complications had arisen out there in the cotton fields, and Mr Hastings was gone to set them to rights. Meanwhile, Miss Lawrence paid a friendly visit to Mrs Calloway ; during which she imparted a few hints of, that designing Dorothy Stevens' wickedness, in wanting to come between her and a gentleman to whom she was privately engaged. Mrs Calloway lifted her hands and eyes, and really promised that if any letters came for Miss Stevens (unless in the handwriting of her infatuated son, of whom she did not feel assured yet) they should be sent intact to the heiress.

And Dora, finding herself looked upon with suspicion at Mrs Calloway's, treated coldly, yearning to get away from Rich borough, the scene of her misery, besought that larly to find her a situation at a distance. Mrs Calloway seized upon the idea, and lost no time in doing it; but she made a stipulation with the girl that she should not disclose to Richborough where her new home was, or give her address. ' Indeed I will not,' acquiesced the poor girl, all too readily. 'I shall never care to see Richborough again, or to hear of it.' Dean Hastings was ploughing his way on the treacherous ocean : and of the two women he left behind it would be difficult to say which of their lives wa3 the most desolate, wanting him; for when Dora's angry passion was over, the first sharp sting of his falsehood and his desertion past, then her tenderness returned. Night by night she bent in prayer for him at her bedside : ' Lord, watch over him and protect him ! Help him, and keep him from all harm." Mr Hastings landed in safety. The first packet of letters he received from home contained the angry one of renouncement, written by Dora. Not that it betrayed anger; only a calm, studied coldness. Opening mechanically the letter that lay next to it, he found it in the handwriting of Miss Lawrence. This letter chiefly contained items of news, written in a playful style : one of them ran as follows—" Will you be surprised to hear that Mrs Calloway has at length given in to the persistency of the young people ? Reports says they are about to be married shortly. Do not break your heart : Dorothy Stevens is not worth it. It is very wrong of her to be so much given to flirting—worse than I am : and that, perhaps you will siy, need not be." The time went on ; two years of it. Dean Hastings had left soon the employ of Mr Lawrence and entered that of another house in the West Indies, connected with Rich borough. News was heard of him but rarely; but at the end of the two years tidings came. Bad tidings, worse than had ever come before. lie had died of yellow fever.

Close upon that, Annabella Lawrence gave her hand to her cousin. Her ill-starred passion, already nearly dead, dead of its very hopelessness, was now thrust away from her heart for ever. She entered upon her reign, as queen of society, heartless, callous, self-indulgent -but so she always had been.

But what of Dora St- vens ? She was more isolated in her new homo than she had been at Mrs Calloway's ; *ut she quietly did her duty in it. Her heart unconsciously remained true to its first love. !She did not hope : but she did believe that all must be at an end between Dean and Miss Lawrence —else why had he not come home to claim her ? But one day, upon taking up the " b'ichborough Gazette," she read in it the death of Dean Hastings, of yellow fever—aged twentyeight. Until then she had not realised how great a part in her heart's life he had rilled. Fold in" her hands, she wept lonely and bitter tears.

'When the sun sets.' Can you picture that solitary girl's figure standing in the sunset that same evening, her hand shading her eyes, and gazing out over the sea in imagination towards the spot where her once fond lover lay in an alien grave. Look at her. The sun lipht rests on the hill tops behind, but she stands in shadow. ' 1 loved him,' she cm 3 in passionate remembrance. ' 1 loved him ; and—l- believe he onco loved me. I love him still. Did ho die thinking I waa falso to him? Oh, can

there be anything in life or death more cruel than that ?'

Her hands are lifted to her brow, as if to press down its throbbing. The pain there seems more than she can bear. 'Do you think he knows now ?' she goes on, lifting her aching eyes as if in imaginary appeal to the gold and amethyst clouds left by the sunset. ' Are all things made plain in that other world ?—are all the cruel mysteries that perplex us here, the misunderstandings and the sorrows, made plain at last •>.'

Ah, who can tell her ? Who knows ? Some three weeks, it might have been, after this, that Dora received a small, deli-cately-papered packet. It contained wed-ding-cake and cards : 'Mr and Mrs Richard Lawrence.'

'She has lost no time,'mused Dora that same evening, when, her duties over for the day, she stood in her favorite spot beyond the laurels, under the sunset. 'No time if she was waiting for him. Oh, I wonder how it all was? Did he love her?—But, why ask it ?—to what end now ? She is here, beginning her wedded life; and he—lies there.'

It appeared, however, if she spoke of Dean Hastings (as she undoubtedly did), that he did not lie there. He was at her elbow. His footsteps fell softly over the grass, and she did not see or hear him until he came round the laurels.

' I beg your pardon, Miss Stevens. I took the liberty of calling at the house to ask for you, and an old servant told me you had come out here.'

did not faint; but she did scream. Yes, it was Dean Hastings, looking ill and shadowy. 'ls it yourself ?' she gasped. 'We thought you were dead.' • But I did not die, Dorothy. I was given over in the yellow fever; and somehow or other my death got reported here, I find.' ' And what have you come over for V she asked, all in a tremble of confusion.

' Various odds and ends of matters. T get up my strength, for one thing; and to settle down at Richborough, for I am not going back ; and to marry you, if you will have me.' ' Oh, Mr Hastings I'

' I have heard a word or two dropped from one and another at Kichborough, Dorothy, for it is there that I have stayed since I landed :*and I begin to think that you and I had some false friends. You are not yet Mra Charles Calloway ' ' Oh !' put in Dorothy. ' Stay a bit, my dear. And lam not yet the husband of Miss Lawrence. She has taken another, by the way. So—do you see any reason why we should not take one another ? No impediment exists now, my darling; I am in a good position ; a partner of the house I am in; and can set up our tent well. Dora, what ''o you say ? You know, at least you ought to know, that I never would have have married anyone but you.' What did she say ? Nothing. She yielded herself to the arms held out to her, and bent her face down on the true hearted, sheltering breast, happy sobs, joyful tears, bedewing it. Oh, how merciful was God ! The sun went down behind the hills in a blaze of glory. It 3 last lingering rays of crimson and purple fell upon them as they stood together in happiness.

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