LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2493, 3 April 1882, Page 4

LITERATURE.

UNDEB THE STABS. (Concluded.) 'I do not He!' she said, slowly and distinctly, and In a low, concentrated voiee. ' Muriel does not love me P ' I mattered ,- " why did she accept me for her husband, then ?'

' W hy did her relative wed Hugo Tregarthon ? Was it for love, think you ?' Mercedes questioned, with an evil sneer; 'or was it from want of position, of wealth ? Muriel Cameron will become your wife; but it will be for tbe sake of your well-known coffers, for the purpose of bearing a name centuries old. She loves Juan Qonsales ; but a Spaniard and a poor man is no fit mate for her.' A few stars gleamed faintly down through the interlaced boughs, and under their light the pare white flowers that grew on the path offered a strange contrast to Mercedes flushed cheek and flashing eyes, and yet within those eyes there was a yearning deprecatory look that touched me. 'Mercedes,' I said, as softly as I could, ' I thank yon for having opened my eyes before it was too late. Poor little Murielpoor child ? Her happiness shall not be sacrificed to anything as shalowy as ambition. Bat pardon me, if I ask for some proof of your words before I can put away from me entirely the only ray of snnshine that my life has known. Ton may be mistaken, Mercedes ?' She shook her head. ' Not mistaken 1 Tomorrow Juan Groasales comes here. At ten o'clook of the following evening you will see Muriel steal out from the door of the eastern tower to meet her lover near the old well in the wood. It is their trysting hoar. Watch, and you will find I tell no lie. But do not, for the love of Heaven, go near them Muriel will deem you an eavesdropper and dishonorable, and Juan will kill you. Spaniards are a treacherous nation.' I bent my head In answer, and went through the solitude of the forest, and noble trees appeared to look down contemptuously on the mean and pitifal plaything a woman that Muriel had made me. Mercedes did not lie. The clock chimed tbe hour of ten. Darkness fell in Hack bars aoross the earth ; and from the door of the eastern tower I saw Muriel emerge noiselessly, stealthily—my sweet, white-robed Muriel, whom I had deemed pure and good as the angels ! On and on she went; and in the friendly shadows I followed her down, down to a sylvan path, In which was the old well. A picturesque, weirdlike objeot it looked In the deepening gloom ; atd besldo It, lounging over the parapet, I saw Juan Qonsales figure. It was enough. The girl, almost a child in years who had put her fair white arms around my neck and let me plant love's kisses on her rosebud lips, was a light

o' love—a traitress. I paused at some distance behind a tree, and after a while I marked the little white hands, that hid tendered flattered in my grasp, go ont towards another man, who took them, and—l believed I should go mad—pressed his month to them.

I waited for nothing more. I knew that to tee him touch her lips would drive reason from my brain, eo I fled; and that night 1 left Tregarthon. It had beon a habit of mine to come and go from Treg»rthoa, so I never troubled to leave a line. Three months after I went back, looking like a ghost; for I had been prostrated with fever, and health and strength had deserted me. I was dying—ay, dying—to look on Muriel once more. True, she had never loved me ; she had deceived me, dishonored the sacred name of 'love.' Yet I longed to see her, even though she might be the wif .1 of another man. But Mercedes was the only one I saw. Juan Gonsales had been recalled to Seville ; and to be nearer to Mm Muriel had gone to the south of France. Hugo Tregarthon's second wife had died suddenly; and Hugo Tregarthon's himself was ai much immured in his library as though be had been a m >nk.

So fate ordained that Mercedes and I should be thrown together. She loved me j no need for her to tell me so. I read love in her looks, her words, the blußhea and tremor that came at my glance or touch. I did not love her ! My heart was dead to all women, since Muriel had cheated me out of sunshine and joy. Well, well! Those who know the world will understand how easily a man is fooled by aolever woman, especially If her heart works Bide by side with her brain. Suffic-j it to say that one night, when the mcon was at its full and Mercedes' southern beauty looked richer and more imperial than ever, I asked her to be my wife. She twined her arms ronnd my nook, and rained down mad kissas on my cheek and brow and lips ; a wild fierce unreasoning passion shook her frame. 1 Guy, Guy!' she almost shouted in an exultant voice, ' I have you now! and, oh God, I love you so, that to reach you 1 would wade through rivers of human blood !' I let her shower down caresses, I listened to her burning words ; but a etrange shudder passed over me at her clasp, and I felt a thrill of repulsion that honor bade me hide. Two months had gone by since our marriage; but I could not love my wife. With my great passionate heart lavishing every memory on Muriel—my ]o3t Muriai ; with my thirsting soul craving daily, hourly, for the pure reßtful feeling Muriel had given me, Mercedes* violent affection was torture. Phe began to upbraid me for ooldness. She said, when her glance went up to mine, it met with no rttum. When her hand clung to mine in fever, it had no responsive pressure.

' Guy I Guy 1 yon shall love me!' she would mutter, ' in spite of all —in spite of all I' 'ln spite of what ?' I asked carelessly, for her want of calm and rest wearied me,'

'ln spite of what would make you hate me—that is, if y ou do not hate me already !' She blushed. 'I believe I do.'

The words broke from me Involuntarily. I had no desire to irritate her, though she was far from my heart, hhe started from her favourite seat on a low ottoman at my feet. Standing face to face, she fl ing her coal black hair off her temples, and glared at me like a wild beast, her hands tightly clenched together, the veins swollen and purple on her brow. * You believe you hate me 1' she cried fiercely and shrilly ; you phall know that you do ; and that, in spite of that hate, you are mine, mine only, until death divides us: Poor puling Muriel cannot take you from me now. No woman can ; for you are my husband, Guy, bound to me by bonds that you dare not break. No Tregarthon ever broke a vow ; and you are too proud to be the first to do so. If on believe you bate me ? Now, Guy—now, when I have got you, when Muriel cannot ba your wife—l tell you that she loved you all the while, if Buch feelings as hers oan be called love. Ihey are as water to wine compared to what I feel. Muriel was afraid of me ; and she went, at my bidding, to give a message tr> Juan Gonsales. He loved her, and told her eo ; but she affirmed h<r feelings for you, ana parted from him there andthe:>. Yes, she loved you ; and when you left her without a word, you planted a death-stab in her breast. Sne never lcoked up again when you deserted her, Guy Tregarthon. She was dying fas*: when I last heard of her. She may be dead even now !' O God ! O God ! I stood and listened to the words. My heart seemed frozen within me. All I remembered was that Muriel loved me; that I must reach her before she died. Bat howP A woman was in my path, a woman like a wild fierce panther. A woman, or a devil! 1 shut my eyes. In the far south I pictured Muriel. I wouid reach her yet; reach her, clasp her, hear her words of forgiveness, even if I— I threw one shuddering glance at Mercedes, and strode out of the house.

Life was a scourge; no hr.ur of it was free from the woman whom I had awera to love and to honor, and wh m I hated and de Dpisecl. All the afternoon I had borne the burden ; but when the shadows cf evening began to trail in black bars across the earth, I crept out. The fragrance of the pines swept over the land ; the 000 l eight sir touched my throbbiDfj temples ; tha solitnde was a boon. Then from a clump of lauristinus my wife's tall figure emerged. She would not leave me alone. I hurried my steps up the glen, through the wood towards the silvery beach, upon which the waves dashed themselves in the impotent wrath that moved my heart. My blood boiled, my brain whirled, and a fell purpose was in my breast, though I hardly defined it myself. It was there—a devil driving me on and on—and I was no more able to resist It than I conld have stemmed the waters of a mighty flood. My cheeks burned; my hands were fevered and restless. Mercedes walked beside me, her face white and cruel, her eyes glittering like steel; taunting words like whip • thongs dropping from her lips, thongs that drove me on and on to her destruction and my ow n CKd, how I see it all again; the picture, painted in vivid color—the color of blood—is ever before me! > othlng can wash it from my memory ; and time, as it goes on, seems to render the hues more indelible. But was It not the work rf a master hand, the work of the devil I She drove me to it by her mocking smile, her stinging irony, her jealousy, that was cruel as the grave. I put out my hands helplessly, dazed and almost blind with the rage that seethed within me. I tried—Heaven knows I tried —to keep my restless fingers still; but I oonld not. I could not. Suddenly I seiz d her in the desperate o'utch of madness. Even then, defiant and insolent, she lifted up her eyes to mine, nnd laughed. That laugh was the crowning insult. Bound her slim throat my fingers wreathed and tightened. Soma horrible demon within me laughed out then with a shrill triumphant laugh, that must have reached the Bky and told of my crime. Mercedes did not even struggle. Mr grip was too sudden, too hard. In a second I released ber, and she fell at my feet with her face upturned to mine. I Btood spellbound—rigid as a stone—for the space of a second. The horrible faoinatlon of that white face impelled me to stoop lower and lower. Dropping on my shaking knees, I gazed transfixed on the swollen lip. The mocking smile that still lingered on the blaokened lips mesmerised me into a dreadful tranco. I looked at them, stared at them with horror that mingled with a wild fiendish delight I was free, free as the birds in the air. The creature who had owned me as hers was dead, hurled by my own hand into e'ernlty. The woman who had stood between me and her—Muriel, beloved Muriel —lay before me, white and cold, her pulses stilled for ever. She lay under the watchful but silent stars, a senseless, terrible thing. « Hurrah!' I shouted again and again, like a maniac; and tha wind howled in echo, and the waters moaned over my sin. But a deadly fear crept over me. tinppoae a human eye had been witness. Suppose my dead raised up a barrier between me and Muriel! 1 lifted the body in my Bhuddering arms, arid hid it behind a rocky ledge. Then, when midnight came, and all the world was asleep and no sound was nigh but the Jgreat beating heart of heart of Nature, I crept back to the beach, and, digging a grave in the sand, I buried my wife deep, desp, bat not so deep that I could forget her ! Night and day her dead form lay beside me, sat beside me, until I could bear it no longer. So I went and told them what I had done, and guided them to where see lay. They were good and gentle to me mad Bat I am not mad ; my brain burns when tha star gleam falls on it; but when the night grows dark, dark as my own sonl, I sleep, and droam of

Muriel. Muriel, who was carried away by her sister spirits to heaven. A gulf of blord lies between us that neither she nor I could span. Muriel, my Muriel, who died from love of me, and from pity of my sin 1 Abridged from "Thmlpy's Magazine."