LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1930, 1 May 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A CASE OF MISPLACED JEALOUSY.

[Abridged from the “ Sound Table. ”]

( Concluded .)

And then he unfolds tho paper and begins to read:—

“ Beanville-sur-Mer, 27th July, 1879 “ I was born at Sallymahone, in Connemara, twenty-six years ago, to the day, almoss to tho hour, for it is now twilight. My father was Viscount Anderton, of Ballymahone. Thank God, I can say was I for thongh he was a bad man, as the world has it, I would not have him read these pages for fifty times the wealth I call mine. I never was properly educated. Such scraps of knowledge I have were picked np somehow between the castle library and the parish priest; and I lived alone, for we were wretchedly poor, and, being proud as he was poor, my father would neither make new friends nor associate with old ones. And I think that the sting of his poverty was that it came of his own making ; for he had been rich once, and had nobody to thank or to curse but himself and the gaming table (for his empty purse and lost position. Moreover, my mother died before I was old enough to know her, anti so I was left to grow up as best I could, or as badly, which is nearer the truth. I was left to myself in a wild country, among lawless people, with the result that, at eighteen, 1 was the hardest rider and the most wilful girl in the country; but a mad passionate craving for sympathy, for something to love, alternated with my gloomy moods or dare-devil escapades, and I believe firmly that if I had been so fortunate as to meet with a gcod masterful sweetheart, who could have appreciated my nature and controlled it, I should not now he writing this. And here I wish it to ha understood that I am not entering into these details with tho intention of excusing or extenuating my sin, but only to explain how it came to pass that I could, being a woman, compass

‘With my eighteenth birthday I entered upon a new life, for my father emerged from his solitude and took me to the continent; then, after a month at Brighton, we took up our residence in Dublin for the winter. I was presented at the Castle, and went out a good deal, and in May we migrated to England, and I made my debut in London society. I suppose the many years of retirement my father had spent at Ballymahoue had to a certain extent retrieved his fortunes, for during this time of gaiety we lived well, dressed well, and mingled with our peers. I was very grateful to him then for h’s generosity. I have since come to call it by another name, for experience has taught me that it is not only in Circassia that parents sell their dinghtera. I was, by common consent, the beauty of the season. And, though my face was my whole fortune, it was none the less valuable as our stock-in-trade. The devotion that even the heiresses of the day excited paled before the success of my strange beauty, and it soon became evident that amongst a host of admirers more or less eligible I had only to choose the husband I disliked least. As for love, it was out of the question. My heart seemed dead. My newly-gained experience of the marriage market had filled me with contempt of my father (thesalesman) andmyaelf (the wares), and the purchasers seemed to me as contemptible. So I resolved to sell myself to the highest bidder. One day there came a certain Prince Boarescu, a Roumanian magnate, nearly sixty, but fabulously rich. 1 told him I hated him. He laughed and married me.

‘Three years of Prince Boareson’s companionship should have been enough to corrupt anyone. It did not improve me. The loathing with which he and his associations inspired me saved me from contamination. But though I might be innocent, I was no longer ignorant of the seven capital sins and their combinations. The savage cruelties on the prince’s estates, the gross immoralities of Bucharest, and the delicate vice cf Paris ; the gambling and gluttony and duelling and blasphemy of our world—a good school for such as I. At last the prince succumbed to an apoplexy of passion, and 1 was free. I came back to Connemara, restored Castle Anderton, and, being sick of myself, prayed for death. But, unhappily for me, my father died instead. And so I was alone. And then came across my path my idol, my hero, my darling, ray husband. Yes, for iyou are my husband still, (-uy!— you have forgiven me, I know. And I am coming to you. It matters little when or where I met him. I have no time to waste. For I am longing—oh, so madly!—to lay down this pen and follow him, where I may fall at his dear feet and bathe them with my tears | and then, perhaps, be lifted to his breast and comforted. I loved him at the first sight of the bright hardy face, the waving gold of his hair, the strength of his presence, the truth and courage and kindliness of his deep blue eyes. I knew, when first I saw him, that he was all that makes up the nobility of man. And, knowing this, I resolved that, should it cost me my life, I would never strive to win his love, for I was unworthy of him. But he should not have kissed my portrait that golden afternoon in the woods ; for when I came upon him unawares, and saw his lips upon the unfeeling counterfeit, what could I do but He would have none of my wealth, and I, how glad I was to sever the link that bound me to the hated past, and owe all to him ! So we left it in trusty hands, and began a new life of love and hope among the fields and dales of merry England ; and every day and every hour we passed together seemed to li-'t me out of my former self, to raise me to something not quite unfit to share his life. I could fill volumes with the record of this happy time. But it is not of that I have to write, and I must finish quickly, or my strength will fail me. ‘ This year, chance, or fate, or which yon will, brought us to the French coast for the bathing season. Beauville was very full, and we found ourselves embarked on a ceaseless tide of gaiety. Three weeks ago—it seems three centuries —there drove past us a lovely woman. I heard them whisper her name and laugh. ‘ There goes the belle of the night,’ they said. Guy Icokel up carelessly and she caught his eyes. They both turned pale. They knew each other. He trembled like an old man. I had never seen his face change but once before, when I asked him if ho had a sister. the was dead, he said. I tried to still the beating of my heart by saying to myself that he must have known her before our marriage. We have been married four years. And this was the beggining of my madness, for from that day he was no longer the same man. He became absent, haggard, guilty-faced. He invented excuses that left me alone for hours, he received letters that flushed him with a sudden red, he hid away his writing when I appeared, and, cruellest of all, he met her secretely in different places every day. For I sot a watch upon him 1 It is impossible for me to record the events that fllled these terrible weeks, I Jived them out as one dreams a nightmare. As I had loved him, so 1 came to loath him, passionately ; and the heart my love had purified was fllled with evil spirits. ‘ Aud now to my story. I was walking alone with my thoughts along the cliff. I came to a rugged path that crept down its face to a little nook I had discovered, where was a bench and a greenery. I followed it absently, my eyes fixed on the ground. When I raised them I raw my husband standing, her head upon his breast, his arms about her neck. A murmured word of en-

dearmont caught my ear. and she was sobbing on his breast! I hissed out something ; I know not what; and then, with all the strength of my raging jealousy, I spurned them from me. It was a goodly eight, I thought, to see them fall, whirling over and over in the descent. And when I leant over the precipice, clinging to the root of a waving, rustling tree, I saw, on the projecting rocks, torn strips of dress and red splashes here and there, and, far below upon the shingle, a jumbled, shapeless heap. Wheu I reached Bsauville, they broke the news to me. Such a terrible accident! Once more, so young a widow! But I had sat in judgment upon myself, find passed sentence. Before I died, however, I would read the letters she wrote him. So I broke open the desk he locked so jealously, “The belle of the night ” was his sister! In her letters she thanked God for having sent him to save her from herself. She forgave the seducer who had deserted her. She would begin a new life with her brother’s help. She would bid him farewell on the cliff, and then go back to England and await him there. “ Oh, Guy, my darling! lam going out in the little boat you gave me, and t shall not return. But, where I am going, perhaps, I shall see you from afar ; and then, oh love ! remember how I loved you !’”

There is a dead silence as the lawyer concludes his story, ‘The main details of the murder arid suicide are to be made public, at my client’s command,’ he says at last, in a business like voice, that jars strangely upon his audiencs ; •and all her property she bequeaths to the poor.’