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Show WW WAFTS i VAIN FOR SUITOR LIVES IN STATE OF SIEGE WHILE SUING MAN WHO WON HER HEART EIGHT YEARS AGO. WOOED BUT WOULD NOT WED In Turn She Is Being Sued by Her Own Family for Rocky Acres Left by Father Still Loves Faithless Man. Montville. Conn. Alone in the bungalow bun-galow on her six acres of rock-strewn cedar grove hillside. Myra Church Cos-tello. Cos-tello. the most beautiful brunette in the Valley of the Thames, awaits the outcome of her suit for a paltry $5,000 recompense for a broken heart and eight years of waiting for him who j woed and won, but would not wed. She is also defending herself against her own mother and four sisters, who live in the big family homestead at the foot of the hill and who would break her father's will, by which she inherited inher-ited her stony pasture land. For 20 years she was. the belle of the valley, and no dance or husking between be-tween Norwich and New London was a real success in the eyes of the men unless she was there. She won a husband when she was 22. She became be-came a widow at 23. and again the young men of the valley sought her. But now, at 38. but still beautiful, she's a recluse, reading her Bible by night and gazing down the valley through her spyglass by day, because Samuel Darrow, to whom she plighted her troth eight years ago, would not let her name the day. Darrow is a railroad rail-road agent at New London. He is six feet two inches tall, looks like a Gibson Gib-son picture come to life and is an heir to much real estate. Just why such a handsome man should jilt such an attractive woman afler jealously guarding her from all other aspirants all- these years is the problem that every village store parliament parlia-ment and every sewing society in the valley is trying to solve. It is a romance merely to call on Mrs. Costello, even if you are not engaged en-gaged to her or being sued bv her. 2 y She Keeps Vigil with a Spyglass Beside Be-side the Drawbridge. She is in a state of siege in her little castle on the hill, because she is being sued as well as suing. Of all the folks in Montville and the near-by villages, her own folks alone are giving comfort com-fort to the handsome enemy In New London. The family trouble antedates the lover's abandonment. Joseph Church, father of Myra, who was of a long line of prosperous farmers, found his home unhappy four years ago, so he built himself a shack on the other side of his pond, and there lived the life of a hermit on his own well-slocked well-slocked farm and within sight and sound of his family. That little pond was as wide as the Atlantic and Pacific Paci-fic combined for the farmer and his women folk. But last fall the old man was not seen on his side of the pond for sev- 'Jf era days. The women were indifferent indiffer-ent all but Myra. She went around lo the shack and found her father stricken with paralysis. She forgot the family row and stayed to care for him till he died, last December. He gave her the land in his will. The sisters sis-ters want to take it away from her. That is why it Is romantic to visit the widow. A brook divides her domain from her mother's and then! Is a drawbridge draw-bridge over the brook. Everyone who comes is scrutinized by the woman mi the hill before she comes down to drop the bridge and bid him welcome. She uses the same old spyglasB through which she used to watch for the coming com-ing of Samuel Darrow. Mrs.' Costello was hospitable (ho other day when a reporter called and led him up the hill to her tiny castle. "I am not pretending to be pious." she said as she put away her Hible. "but this Bible and this 'History of Man' were the only bookB that father took across the pond with him, and so I brought (hem up here to read when he died. I enjoy them both, but in the 1. 000 paget: of that 'History of Man' I don't find any excuse for a man Like Samuel Dsrrow. Neither can I find any reason for my still loving him as I do. But I think 1 am doing right to sue him. if It had not been for him I could have married long ago. "Now it. is too late. I am 38 years old and all the boys that I grew up with have gone away from the village." |
