yards away, there was service. The roll of the organ and the voices of the choir floated faintly across the valley between, and the west window, lighted from within, lay against the night like a huge medallion of figured gold painted on flat darkness. The air was intoxicating with the scent of unseen roses, and as he waited a far-away bugle-call sounded from the fort. Unrealizing, but feeling every influence, Lindsay waited, and only knew that he was lonely and wanted her. If he had glanced up beyond where the crimson flowers of the great weigelia-vine climbs over the arched portico and splashes color boldly on the white stone façade of the hotel, he might have seen Evelyn's blond head blossoming like a flower from her window. As she had said, she was wretched, and the music and the gayety of the ball were so hateful to her that she could not stay downstairs. Here in her quiet room she might at least have the luxury of giving up to unhappiness. She folded her arms, in their long gloves, on the window-sill, and looked out where the lights trembled on the boats in the bay, and the starlit sky brooded over the hills of Paget parish across the water. She began to talk aloud to herself. "It is childish to deny it. I have to face it-I love him. Englishman, married everything that is impossible. Nothing makes any difference-I love him. I can't help that, but I can help giving up to it. I will get over it-I will. And I never, never will let him know it. He is good-he is different. He would never feel this way to me. It is just friendliness in him, and his way - his beautiful, fascinating way. He would despise me for this. I will die before I will let him know it." She shivered. With a quick rustling the door opened, and Mrs. Clinton's hand was on her shoulder. "Evelyn! I'm glad you're still dressed. Come down at once. Some one is waiting for you under the oleanders. You mustn't keep him. Come!" Evelyn faced her, solemn and tragic. "What do you mean? Who is it?" Mrs. Clinton hesitated; she was bursting with the news. "The Governor," she said. "He wants to see you." Evelyn, shaking with her own thoughts, VOL. CVIL-No. 638.-37 reflected a moment. She was afraid to trust herself just yet. "I don't think I can see him," she said. "It can't be anything. To-morrow will do." Mrs. Clinton had an inspiration. "Evelyn, don't be cold-blooded. He's in trouble and needs you." Lindsay, his eyes on the front door of the hotel, saw Mrs. Clinton appear against the light, a silhouette of an extremely chic fairy, and behind her the swaying figure of the girl he loved. Annette was talking volubly as they came up to him, standing in the shadows to meet them. She gave a soft little shriek as she made him out. "Aren't you disWhat do you think "You frightened me. What do you think, General, I have a 'crick' in my shoulder-blade," she rippled out, in clearcut infantile tones. tressed to hear it? I had better do? Now don't advise a porous plaster-it would look so badly with a low dress," and she slipped her scarlet - embroidered sleeve - band and glanced at her shoulder like a cockatoo. Lindsay did not hear a word she said. He stood breathless, looking at the white, dim figure beside her, the eyes shining at him through the darkness. Mrs. Clinton's voice stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and she tipped her delicate head towards one and the other. "I think I can do more good somewhere else," she remarked, and with a flutter and rustle she was gone. Indoors the band played a dashing twostep; an endless round of dancers floated past the windows. Out-of-doors the two were all alone. Evelyn suddenly knew that her hands were held in a close grip which seemed to be the end and meaning of living, and a voice like music was saying words like heaven. Her unwilling conscience stirred drowsily. "Don't," she said, as if the word hurt her. "Don't. It's wicked." people poured out-of-doors in intermissions, and poured back again as waltz or two-step called them. More than once a couple drifted to the iron bench under the oleanders, and seeing it occupied, smiled and drifted away again. But it was too dark for the sharpest eyes to distinguish who they were, and the lovers did not notice, hardly even saw them. After a while carriages rolled up and the broad terrace was filled with their lamps and horses and movement in long succession. Group after group came, laughing and talking, out of the glare of the hallway, and got in the carriages and were driven away. The dance was over. Evelyn awoke to the fact. "We must go in-every one is gonewhat have I been thinking about? What have you been thinking about?" Lindsay told her, and his words were to the point. 'But don't go in for five minutes yet," he pleaded. "It is early. Some one is walking across the terrace. I hope they are not walking this way." His arm tightened as if to keep her against all comers. "They are." Evelyn's eyes were the quicker. "It's Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Ogilvie." Evelyn Minor laughed. "Don't you think you'd better save that sympathy? You'll need it more some other time," she said, and there were uncertain catches in her voice, as if it were hard to talk. But Mrs. Clinton might not be sidetracked. "And poor Jack! poor Jack!" the finished accents went on, as of a wise and cosmopolitan baby. "How are the mighty fallen! A dream of glory, a week of splendor! Love and power on the cards, and to draw only love! To come down to this-to be a Governor, and then to finish by being just engaged like any other man! To an every-day, human girl the ordinary garden white girl of North America! Only love! Poor dear Jack!" Lindsay turned with a quick movement and caught his sweetheart's hand brazenly before them all, and his eyes were misty as he looked at her. "Only love!" he repeated. "Only "The devil!" was Lindsay's welcom- everything!" ing reflection. (6 Do you know how long you young persons have been here?" inquired Mrs. Clinton's voice, with a stern and elderly inflection, from the near distance. "Just two hours and seventeen minutes." Lindsay laughed. He was very fond of Annette. He thought a lot of Ogilvie. There was nothing to say, so he laughed again, and in the sound was that claim of his on the friendliness of the world which the world always honored. Ogilvie put his arm around his shoulder. "By Jove! Lindsay, old boy!" he said, and patted the other man's coat, "I'm sorry our game is up. You're the chief for me, true or false. I believe you could get good work out of me if you would only keep the job. It knocks me out to think of you reduced to the ranks." Lindsay's hand searched for Ogilvie's in the darkness. "Don't condole with me, Teddy," he said, "for I've got all I want on earth," and out of the dimness came a joyful cry as Mrs. Clinton flew at the silent girl. The week of brilliant madness, of successful impossibility, lay just behind them; through the breakers of almost certain humiliation his boat had ridden in on a wave of undeserved good fortune; such an experience might never be in his life again; yet the whole dramatic, dashing episode was an incident, blurred already, in the dazzling sunlight which outshines all other. "Love and power!" A chord which sounds deeply the two notes will echo only to one. "All for love and a world well lost," is an old tale, but not, for that, untrue. Lindsay's four words may have been the result of a theory or of a condition, but it makes a prettier fairy-story to believe it-and there are men and women who believe such things -a lasting condition. It is pleasant to think that another generation will surely, as they repeat the half-credited legend of the American Governor of Bermuda, finish with the gracious sentence by which all proper fairy-stories end, "And so they lived happily ever after." THE END. |