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Show iGfe WJANE5 VIRGINIA HALLE ERMINIE PIVE5 ILLUSTRATIONS 6r LAUREN 5TOUT ds coys?avr ay aoaac-Afsfiti. covwyy C zt SYNOPSIS. John Valiant, a rich society favorite, suddenly discovers that the Valiant corporation, cor-poration, which his father founded and which was the principal source of his wealth, had failed. He voluntarily turns over his private fortune to the receiver for the corporation. His entire remaining possessions consist of ar. old motor car, a white bull dog and Damory court, a neglected neg-lected estate Tn Virginia. On the way to Damcry court he meets Shirley Dand-ridge. Dand-ridge. an auburn-haired beauty, and decides de-cides that he Id going to like Virginia immensely. im-mensely. Shirley's mother. Mrs. Dandridge, Dand-ridge, and Major Bristow exchange reminiscences rem-iniscences during which It is revealed that the major. Valiant's father, and a man named Sassoon were rivals for the hand of Mrs. Dandridge In her youth. Sassoon and Valiant fought a duel on her account In which the former was killed. Valiant finds Damory court overgrown with weeds and creepers and decides to rehabilitate the place. Valiant saves Shirley from the bite of a snake, which bites him. Knowing the deadliness of the bite, Shirley sucks the poison from the wound and saves his life. Valiant learns for the first time that his father left Virginia Vir-ginia on account of a duel in which Doctor Doc-tor Southall and Major Bristow acted as his father's seconds. Valiant and Shirley become good friends. Mrs. Dandridge faints when she meets Valiant for the first time. Valiant discovers that he has a fortune in old walnut trees. The yearly tournament, a survival of the jousting of feudal times, is held at Damory court. At the last moment Valiant takes the place of one of the knights, who Is sick, and enters the lists. He wins and chooses Shirley Dandridge as queen of beauty to the dismay of Katherlne Fargo, a former sweetheart, who Is visiting In Virginia. The tournament ball at Damory court draws the elite of the countryside. Shirley Shir-ley Is crowned by Valiant as queen of beauty. Valiant tells Shirley of his love and they become engaged. Katherlne Kargo determining not to give up Valiant Vali-ant without a struggle, points out to Shirley Shir-ley how terrible it would be for the woman wom-an who caused the duel to meet Valiant. ho looks so much like his father. Shlr-!ey, Shlr-!ey, uncertain, but feeling that her mother moth-er was in love with the victim of Valiant's Vali-ant's pistol, breaks the engagement. Major Bristow is fatally wounded by Greet King, a liberated convict, who he had sent to prison, hut before dving Bristow confesses con-fesses to Mrs. Dandridge that he had Kept a letter Valiant had written to her after the duel. Valiant decides to leave Damory court and writes Shirley that he will love her always. CHAPTER XXXIII. Continued. 'With unsteady fingers she unwrapped un-wrapped the oiled-silk, broke the letter's let-ter's seal, and read: "Dearest: "Before you read this, you will no doubt have heard the thing that has happened this sunshiny morning. Sas-soon Sas-soon poor Sassoon! I can say that with all my heart is dead, vvnai tms fact will mean to you, God help me! I cannot guess. For I have never been certain, Judith, of your heart. Sometimes I have thought you loved me me only as I love you. Last night when I saw you wearing my cape jessamines at the ball, I was almost sure of it. But when you made me promise, whatever happened, not to lift my hand against him, then I doubted. Was it because you feared for him? Would to God at this moment I knew this was not true! For whatever what-ever the fact, I must love you, darling, dar-ling, you and no other, as long as I live!" When she had read thus far, she closed the letter, and pressing a hand against her heart as if to still its throbbing, locked the written pages in a drawer of her bureau. She went downstairs and made Ranston bring her chair to its accustomed place un der the rose-arbor, and sat there through the falling twilight. She and Shirley talked but little at dinner, and what 6he said seemed to come winging from old memories her own girlhood, its routes and picnica and harum-scarum pleasures. And there were long gaps in which she sat silent, playing with her napkin, the light color coming and going in her delicate cheek, lost in revery. It was not till the hall-clock struck her usual hour that she rose to go to her room. "Don't send Emmaline," she 6aid. "I shan't want her." She kissed Shirley Shir-ley good night. "Maybe after a while you will sing for me; you haven't played your harp for ever so long." In the subdued candle-light Mrs. Dandridge locked the door of her room. She opened a closet, and from the very bottom of a small haircloth trunk, lifted and shook out from its many tissue wrappings a faded gown of rose-colored silk, with pointed bod-Ice bod-Ice and old-fashioned puff-6leeves. She spread this on the bed and laid with it a pair of yellowed satin slippers and a little straw basket that held a spray of what had once been cape jessamine. jessa-mine. In th flickering light she undressed and rearranged her hair, catching its silvefy curling meshes in a low soft coil. Looking almost furtively about her, she put on the rose-colored gown, and pinned the withered flower-spray on its breast. She lighted more candles--In the wall-brackets and on the dressing-table and the reading-lamp reading-lamp on the desk. Standing before her mirror then, she gazed long at the reflection the poor faded rose-tint against the pale ivory of her slender neck, and the white hair. A little quiver ran over her lips. " 'Whatever the fact,' she whispered. you and no other as long as I live.' " She unlocked the bureau-drawer then, took out the letter, and seating herself by the table, read the remainder: remain-der: "I write this in the old library and Bristow holds my horse by the porch. He will give you this letter when 1 am gone. "Last ntght we were dancing all 0f us at the fen. I can scarcely be-Ueve be-Ueve it wa less than twelve hours ago! The calendar on my desk has a motto for each leaf. Today's is this: 'Every man carries his fate on a riband rib-and about his neck.' Last night I would have smiled at that, perhaps; today I say to myself, 'It's true it's true!' Two little hours ago I could have sworn that whatever happened to me Sassoon would suffer no harm. "Judith, I could not avoid the meeting. meet-ing. You will know the circumstances, circum-stances, and will see that it was forced upon me. But though we met on the field, 1 kept my promise. Sassoon did not fall by my hand." She had begun to tremble so that the paper shook in her hands, and from her breast, shattered by her quick breathing, the brown jessamine petals dusted down in her lap. It was some moments before she could calRi herself sufficiently to read on. "He fired at the signal and the shot went wide. I threw my pistol on the ground. Then whether maddened by my refusal to fire, I cannot tell he turned his weapon all at once and shot himself through the breast. It was over in an instant. The seconds did not guess do not even now, for it happened but an hour ago. As the code decrees, their backs were turned when the shots were fired. But there were circumstances I cannot touch upon to you which made them disapprove disap-prove which made my facing him just then seem unchivalrous. I saw it in Bristow's face, and liked him the better for it, even while It touched my pride. They could not know, ot course, that I did not intend to fire. Well, you and they will know it now! And Bristow has my pistol; he will find it undischarged thank God, thank God! "But will that matter to you? If you loved Sassoon, I shall always In your mind stand as the indirect cause of his death! It is for this reason I am going away I could not bear to look in your accusing eyes and hear you Bay it. Nor could I bear to stay here, a reminder to you of such a horror. If you love me, you will write and call me back to you. Oh, Judith, Ju-dith, Judith, my own dear love! I pray God you will!" She put the letter down and laid her face upon it. "Beauty! Beauty!" she whispered, dry-eyed. "I never knew! I never knew! But it would have made no difference, darling. I would have forgiven you anything everything! You know that, now, dear! You have been certain of it all these years that have been so empty, empty to me!" But when the faded rose-colored gown and the poor time-yellowed slippers slip-pers had ben laid back in the haircloth hair-cloth trunk: when, her door once more' unbolted, she lay in her bed in the dim glow of the reading-lamp, with her curling silvery hair drifting across the pillow and the letter beneath it, at last the tears came coursing down her cbeeks. And with the loosening of her tears, gradually and softly came joy infinitely infi-nitely deeper than the anguish and sense of betrayal. It poured upon her like a trembling flood. Long, long ago he had gone out of the world It was only his memory that counted to her. Now that could no longer spell pain or emptiness or denial. It was engold-ened engold-ened by a new light, and in that light she would walk gently and smilingly to the end. She found the slender golden chain that hung about her neck and opened the little black locket with its circlet of laureled pearls. And as she gazed at the face it held, which time had not touched with change, the sojnd of Shirley's harp came softly in through the window. She was playing an old-fashioned old-fashioned song, of the sort ehe knew her mother loved best: Darling, I am growing old. Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow today; Life Is fading fast away. But, my darling, you will be Always young and fair to me. Outside the leaves rustled, the birds called and the crickets sang their unending un-ending epithalamia of summer nights, and on this tone-background the melody mel-ody rose tenderly and lingeringly like a haunting perfume of pressed flowers. She smiled and lifted the locket to her face, whispering the words of the refrain: re-frain: Yes. my darling, you will be Always young and fair to me! The smile was still on her lips when she fell asleep, and the little locket still lay in her fingers. CHAPTER XXXIV. When the Clock Struck. "Sorrow weeps sorrow sings." As Shirley played that night, the old Rus-ian Rus-ian proverb kept running through her mind. When she had pushed the gold harp into its corner she threw herself upon a broad sofa in a feathery drift of chintz cushions and dropped her forehead in her laced fingers. A gilt-framed gilt-framed mirror hung on the opposite wall, out of which her sorrowful brooding brood-ing eyes looked with an expression of dumb and weary suffering. Her confused thoughts raced hither and thither. What would be the end? Would Valiant forget after a time? Would he marry Miss Fargo, perhaps? per-haps? The thought caused her a stab of anguish. Yet she herself could not marry him. The barrier was. impassable! impas-sable! She was still lying listlessly among the cushions when a step sounded on the porch and she heard Chilly Lusk's voice in the hall. With heavy hands Shirley put into place her disheveled hair and rose to meet him. "I'm awfully selfish to come tonight," to-night," he said awkwardly; "no doubt you are tired out." She disclaimed the weariness that dragged upon her spirits like leaden weights, and made him welcome with her usual cordiality. She was, in fact, relieved at his coming. At Damory court, the night of the ball, when she had come from the garden with her lips thrilling from Valiant's kiss, she had suddenly met his look. It had seemed to hold a startled realization that she had remembered with a remorseful re-morseful compunction. Since that night he had not been at Rosewood. Ranston had lighted a pine-knot in the fireplace, and the walls were shuddering shud-dering with crimson shadows. Her hand was shielding her eyes, and as she strove to fill the gaps in their somewhat spasmodic conversation with the trivial impersonal things that belonged to their old intimacy, the tiny flickering flames seemed to be darting unfriendly fingers plucking at her secret. Leaning from her nest of cushions she thrust the poker into the glowing resinous mass till sparks whizzed up the chimney's black maw in a torrent. "How they fly!" she said. "Rickey Snyder calls it raising a blizzard in Hades. I used to think they flew up to the sky and became the littlest stars. What a pity we have to grow up and learn so much! I'd rather have kept on believing that when the red leaves in the woods whirled about in a circle the fairies were dancing, and that it was the gnomes who put the cockle-burs in the hounds' ears." She had been talking at random, gradually becoming shrinkingly conscious con-scious of his constrained and stumbling stum-bling manner. She had, however, but half defined his errand when he came to it all in a burst. "I I can't get to it, somehow, Shirley," Shir-ley," he said with sudden desperation, "but here it is. I've come to ask you to marry me. Don't stop me," he went on hurriedly, lifting his hand: "whatever you say, I must tell you. I've been trying to for months and months!" Now that he had started, it came with a boyish vehemence that both chilled and thrilled her. Even In her own desolation, and shrinking almost unbearably from the avowal, the hope and brightness in his voice touched her with pity. It seemed to her that life was a strange jumble of unescapable and incomprehensible pain. And all the while, in the young voice vibrant with feeling, her cringing cring-ing ear was catching imagined echoes of that other voice, graver and more self-contained, but shaken by the same passion, in that Iteration of 'I love you! I love you!" His answer came to hin finally in her silence, and he released her hands which he had caught in his own. They dropped, limp and unresponsive, in her lap. "Shirley," he said brokenly, "maybe you can't care for me yet. But if you will marry me, I I'll be content with so little, till you do." She shook her head, her hair making mak-ing dim flashes in the firelight. "No, Chilly," she said. "It makes me Stooping, She Looked at It Closely. She Started as She Did So. wretched to give you pain, but I must I must! Love isn't like that. It doesn't come afterward. 1 know. I could never give you what you want. You would end by despising me, as I should despise myself." "I won't give up." he said Incoherently. Incoher-ently. "I can't give up. Not so long as I know there's nobody else. At the ball I thought I thought perhaps you cared for Valiant but since he told me " He 6topped suddenly, for she was looking at him from an ashen face. "He told me there was no reason why I should not try my luck," he said difficultly. dif-ficultly. "I asked him." There was a silence, while he gazed at her, breathing despair. Then he tried to laugh. "All right," he said hoarsely. "It it doesn't matter. Don't worry." She stretched out her hand to him in a gesture of wistful pain, and he held it a moment between both of his, then released It and went hurriedly hur-riedly out. As the door closed, Shirley sat down, her head dropping into her hands like a storm-broken flower. Valiant Val-iant had accepted the finality of the situation. With a wave of deeper hopelessness than had yet submerged her, she realized that, against her own decision, something deep within her had taken shy and secret comfort in his stubborn masculine refusal. Against all fact, In face of the impossible, impos-sible, her heart had been clinging to this as though his love might even attain the miraculous and somewhere, somehow, recreate circumstance. But now he, too, had bowed to the decree. A kind of utter apathetic wretchedness wretched-ness seized upon her, to replace the sharp misery that had so long been her companion an empty numbness in which, in a measure, she ceaaed to feel. An hour dragged" slowly by and at length she rose and went slowly up the stairs. Her head felt curiously heavy, but It did not ache. Outside her mother's door, as was her custom, she paused mechanically to listen. A tiny pencil of light struck through the darkness and painted a spot of brightness bright-ness on her gown. It came through the keyhole; the lamp in her mother's room was burning. "She has fallen asleep and forgotten it," she thought, and softly turning the knob, pushed the door noiselessly open and entered. A moment she stood listening to the low regular breathing of the sleeper. The reading-lamp shed a shaded glow on the pillow with its spread-out silver sil-ver hair, and on the delicate hands clasped loosely on the coverlet. Shir ley came close and looked down on the placid face. It was smooth as a child's and a smile touched it lightly as if some pleasant sleep-thought had just laid rosy fingers cn the dreaming lips. The light caught and sparkled from something bright that lay between be-tween her mother's hands. It was the enamel brooch that held her own baby curl, and she saw suddenly that what she had all her life thought was a solid pendant, was now open locket-wise locket-wise and that the two halves clasped a miniature. It came to her at once that the picture must be Sassoon's, and a quick thrill of pity and yearning yearn-ing welled up through her own dejection. dejec-tion. Stooping, she looked at it closely. close-ly. Shs started as she did so, for the lace on the little disk of ivory was that of John Valiant. An instant she stared unbelievingly. Then recollection of the resemblance of which Valiant had told her rushed to her, and Bhe realized that it must be the picture of his father. The fact shocked and confounded her. Why should her mother carry in secret the miniature of the man who had killed (TO BE CONTINUED.) |