THE ICE MAIDEN.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1034, 14 May 1883, Page 4

THE ICE MAIDEN.

LITERATURE.

♦ Born in the same week, they had lain in one cradle, while their mothers, linked together in sisterly affection, had stood and gazed on them with loving eyes. Through childhood they had played at the same games, rend the same books, wandered hand-in-hand through the meadows that surrounded their home, and then, alas ! coldness, distrust, and estrangement had fallen as a northern blast on the glad sunshine of their lives, and they had been parted. Joyce Clavering’s father was the Squire of Broadlands, a rich man with an unembarrassed property ; he had no son, and Joyce at his death would be an heiress, while her cousin, flaxen-haired Agnes Sinclair, was the daughter of a captain in a marching regiment who had not a sixpence beyond his pay. When the children were ten, people said Joyce had all the money and Agnes all the beauty, bin for themselves, at that age they knew naught of either money or beauty, but were simple-hearted, happy children, who understood not what sorrow or heart-burnings meant, till one August day when Captain Sinclair wrote home from India, and desired that Agnes should be sent to him at once. She was being spoiled at Broadlands, he said, and, moreover, had lived long enough on her uncle’s charity. The child was sent, but angry letters followed the sending, to be succeeded by a deep silence, and for many years there was no communication of any sort between the Sinclairs and the Claverings. To the former there were born many sons and daughters, to the latter Joyce remained “ sole daughter of their hearts and home.’ Joyce at seventeen was not a beauty ; but she had a calm, intelligent face, with very soft, loving eyes, and possessed such a charm of manner, that you seemed to forget the absence of actual beauty in the presence of her exceeding goodness and gentleness, and care for the feelings and interests of others. Cynical people sneered at Joyce’s niter unselfishness, and said she was only a child as yet; they must wait a little till love came to stir the depths within. But Joyce heard none of these remarks, and would only have smiled at them had she done so, and gone on in her quiet, benevolent, trusting way, the only shadow that ever crossed it being when she thought of her cousin Agnes, and what a pleasure it would be to have her at Broadlands, for her companion and confidante, in all her works of mercy. Pretty Agnes would scarcely have appreciated the life that Joyce preferred ; she would have called it tame and dull, after the garrison.towns in which she had lived, and the round of gaiety into which she had been plunged since her father returned from India., “ Joyce ought to go into society,” Mrs Clavering said to the squire one day, when an account of some of Agnes Sinclair’s gay doings had reached them in a roundabout way. “ Exactly. Yes, I suppose so. We will take her to the county ball; but I doubt if our little Joyce will care much about such frivolities.” The squire, however, was wrong. Joyce was delighted at the idea of going to the county ball, and set about preparing her dress with as much real interest as Agnes herself might have displayed. The fact was, she knew that the town in which Captain Sinclair was quartered at that time was not so very remote from Kessiugton, where the ball was to be held, but that it might bejust possible they would drive over for it. When it became known in the neighbourhood that the heiress of Broadlands was to come out at the Kessiugton county ball, it created quite a sensation, and more than one young fortune-hunter made a point of driving miles not to miss the chance of a presentation on the evening of Joyce’s (Übut, For the most part they were very much disappointed, and gave it as their verdict that the heiress was very cold and very plain. The one favoured individual to whom Joyce was not cold, and who evidently did not think her wholly uninteresting, was a certain Captain Randolph Ferguson, known among bis intimates as “Beauty Ferguson.” He danced repeatedly with Joyce, so much so that lookers on smiled and wondered if he were going in seriously for the heiress. Randolph Ferguson had not been thought till this moment a marrying man ; he had ever been too much in the habit of flitting about from flower to flower, sipping the sweets from each fair blossom as it grew, and his associates were a little surprised. “ But Joyce I he could not see anything in that plain Joyce bat money ; her face was as yellow as her guineas,” Envy decided, increasing Joyce’s plainness with its exaggerating voice. What astonished the squire and Mrs Clav'ering was the extraordinary manner in which their usually undemonstrative Joyce seemed taken with this Captain Ferguson. Her eyes shone brightly while she talked to him, and a deep flush on her pale cheeks made her look in their eyes, at all events, positively handsome. The secret of her interest in Captain Ferguson they could not, however, probably discover, since it referred to a subject never discussed between Joyce and her parents. He was acquainted with Agnes Sinclair, had met, and danced with her at a ball only two nights before. Randolph Ferguson was the first person Joyce had ever met who actually knew Agnes, and the meeting consequently gave her immeasurable pleasure, taking away any feeling of shyness she might have felt; in fact, rendering her in a moment on such “ old friend ” terms with Captain Ferguson, that she chatted away quite openly, telling him all the secrets of her young life, and how the separation from Agnes had pained her. So eloquent did she become, so thoroughly did she allow herself to be drawn ont on the state of her feelings towards Agnes, that she failed to perceive how very one-sided were the confidences, and that Captain Ferguson had

told her nothing about her pretty cousin beyond—“ Yes—-he knew her—had met her that was to say—she was very lovely, and immensely admired.” She did not notice that his remarks were very jerky, and uttered as though it were either a bore or a positive nuisance to have to talk about Agnes at all. Several times did he lead the conversation from the subject, but Joyce invariably returned to it with renewed interest, till Captain Ferguson at last grew resigned, and began to see the wisdom of letting it wear itself out. It was evident that he judged it expedient to be well with the heiress, and by means of Agnes Sinclair was as good a way as any other, if she liked it. At last the squire came to announce the arrival of the carriage, and to conduct Joyce to her mother. Captain Ferguson took this opportunity to say—- “ I have been making the acquaintance of Miss Clavering, sir, when I ought really first to have made yours. My father gave me a letter to take to you, which I have not yet had the pleasure to present.” “Your father—Jack Ferguson ; are you Jack Ferguson’s son ?” “ I am, indeed.” “ Then welcome to Broadlands ; come whenever you like, and stay as long as you please.” And the^Squire wrung the handsome yonng officer’s hand with warmth ; and as he looked from him to Joyce the thought passed through his mind that a marriage between these two would not be altogether objectionable to him. Mrs Clavering received him with almost as much cordiality as did her husband, and as far as the road to Broadlands was concerned, Randolph Ferguson’s path was clear. “ Yon must never mention the Sinclairs before papa; the subject makes him so angry, as to become quite apoplectic,” whispered Joyce as Captain Ferguson escorted her to the carriage. “ I am not in the least likely—that is, I will be very careful.” And there was a smile on Captain Ferguson’s face as the Claverings drove off. He went at once in search of his thick, fur-lined coat, jumped on to a dog-cart, on which one of his brother officers was already seated, and they drove off, at a rapid pace, to barracks. “ Made good innings with the heiress to-night, by Jove;” exclaimed Ferguson’s friend ; what will the other say when she hears of it ?” “ Which other?” His companion laughed. “ Well, their name is legion, but, of course, I mean the last, sweet Agnes Sinclair ; and she loves you, Randolph—loves you devotedly, if ever a little beauty loved a man before.” (To he continued.)