The Sphinx, Vol. 13, No. 184

              December 16th
T1IE SPHINX
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You do not quit) un lerstand,” she sii 1. “You have been so goa l to ms. You have lent ins money, you kept me going, you saved me from starvation. I didn’t want to go away until I had repaid you, Mr. Brandon.”
“ Repaid t Faugh ! It’s horrible to talk of money, a few pounds between a woman and a man who are friends — a woman and a man. Oh, Mrs. Kesteven, I was able to do you a little service ; you have thanked me, you have paid me over and over again.”	#
“ No, I have never thanked you, never ! And as for the money, that you promised me I should repay you.’
“ Yes, when you had made it. I said it to satisfy you. I said it to make you take it, that was all. ”
“ Yes, but you said it, and you must keep to it. I haven’t made enough yet, and that’s why I am staying.”
“ But your husband’s money '! ”
“ No. The English law is very strange, or it seems so sometimes to those who do not quite understand it. My brother-in-law, Sir George Kesteven, is not obliged to pay me anything from my husband’s estate until affairs are wound up, and I believe every executor is given a year in which to wind up things. So he wrote to me, knowing that I am not starving on this side ; he even went so far as to say that I wrote from a good address, and he does not feel inclined to put himself out of the way in order to meet my wishes. I did not tell him just why I wanted some of the money. It is mine, and must be mine before many months are gone by. I only said that I wanted some money. He says that if he were to give it to me it would only be giving it to me out of his own pocket and at his own inconvenience. And so T felt that 1 must remain here either until I have made enough for my purpose, or until the time comes when mine can be kept no longer from me.”
“Otherwise vou would have been gone before this 1 ”
“Yes”.
“I see. Well, I promised that you should pay the money back, and, of course, T cannot go back from my word. 1 wish, ” hiking hold of her hand and looking at her with a wistful smile, “I wish that you would let me write it off as a bad debt. It would be the best way of thanking me that you could think of.
“No, I couldn’t. It would weigh on my conscience all my life. Why should you ? What was I to you V’
“Well, you were a great defl to me. You were a woman that I admired—I don’t mean the woman I loved, apart from that entirely, another feeling altogether -you were a woman with courage and pluck, real grit. You do not understand perhaps, what a pleasure, what an honour it is for a man like me, who has never known the want of money, to be able to help such a woman as you are. I need not tell you that I am disappointed. I won’t bore you with my sensations. God bless you ! You are a good woman. I hope the other fellow will value you as I would have done.”
He bent down and kissed her hands, then without another word strode out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.
For a long time Mary Kesteven sat still and motionless just where he had left her. She drew her breath in long gasps.She had been face to face with love, with pure love, true love, love in which passion took a secondary place. She felt as if she had missed something, as if some great goixl had gone clean out of her life. Even Jocelyn
had never made her feel quite as this man did. Ah, well, it was no use thinking, it was no use worrying or fretting. Her friend was gone—yes, gone. But she had a lover left. And then her thoughts leaped straight away to Jocelyn Mus-grave, and she smiled the happy and tender smile of a woman who has given her heart in exchange for another.
The days went quickly by. It is wonderful how hard work, continuous work, makes the hours fly, and before Mary Kesteven had realised that nearly a fortnight had gone by since Brandon had received his answer, the time of remembrance- -Eastertide— '.'as upon her.
She awoke on Easter Day with a feeling that, after all, life was good, that never again would she know just what it was to feel an Ishmaelite. Yes, life was very good ; and with this Easter all her troubles would find a merciful end in oblivion.
Presently the woman who waited upon her brought her her morning cup of chocolate. There is a parcel for you, Mrs. Kesteven,” she said, with the curious familiarity which obtains on the other side of the Atlantic.
“ A parcel ? Oh !”
“I guess it is a present,” said the woman.
“Perhaps. I will tell you later on if it is.”
She did not open the package until she was left alone. The opening of the first wrapper disclosed a square wooden box. Within the box was a mass of cotton wool, then a leather case enclosed in a hag of grey moleskin. Within the case was an emu’s egg, exquisitely mounted in silver to form a box.
“Now, who could have sent this 1” she cried.
She was flushed with pleasure at the beautiful gift. She rested herself on her elbow the better to examine it. Not a word ! Why, what was this ? At the bottom of the grey bag was card, bearing the name of William Brandon. “This,” he had written on it, “ is the Time of Remembrance; before all, the time of new beginnings and of peace. I send you this Easter offering in token of my undying respect, admiration and affection for you. I beg of you do not wound me by refusing its contents,—Yours, W.B.”
She hastily raised the upper half of the egg, which, swinging back upon a silver hinge,disclosed several pieces of paper. She eagerly snatched them from their receptacle. They were her own I. O. U. ’s to William Brandon,
For a moment she lay there staring at them in bewildered amazement, profound amazement at the depth and purity of this man’s love. So he had sent her hack those pieces of paper ; he had set her free from all obligation to him that she might lose no time in going back to her own country and the man she loved. This was love indeed ; true, pure, unselfish, angelic love.
She fell back among her pillows, her eyes full of tears, her mouth quivering.
“ I have been on the wrong track,” she said to herself. “ Not even Jocelyn loves me like this. What can I dot I can’t refuse them, I can’t accept them. Oh, if I were only free, I mean heart free, that I might pay this man as he would like to be paid. But, there, it’s no use thinking about that. Jocelyn is waiting for me at home, wondering why I remain out here. Shall I take advantage of this last act of generosity and go 1 What am I to do ? What ought I to do 1
She lay there for a long time, thinking, wondering, cogitating, hut arriving at no satisfactory conclusion. And then the maid came bringing her several letteis which had just come by the post. There was one from Sir George Kesteven. making a technical inquiry for the purpose of
pr ibate. There was one from her sister, married happily but poorly in the far north of England, and there was one from Jocelyn Musgrave.
“I feel,” he said, “that you have some spe.-ial reason for remaining so long in New York after all necessity to do so has been done away with. Dear little woman, at first when Das1 dies Kesteven was taken away I fancied that we should go straight back on to the old terms again, that all impediment to our marriage was removed. I did not like to put this very plainly, because I have always been in the habit of preserving a certain amount of the conventionalties and the decencies of life, but your continued absence has told me, even better than the constrained langage of your letters, that I have been superseded. Well, dear little woman, this makes my way more easy. I felt myself all along bound in honour to you, but now that more than six months have gone by since you might reasonably have been expected to return to England, I may as well confess to you that I am not the same man who asked you to cut the knot of your troubles by leaving Kesteven for me. I feel, therefore, that you will sympathise with me when I tell you that I am going to be married next week, and that I am under orders to go to South Africa within a week of my marriage. This has been rather hurriedly pushed on, first because I did not feel myself free to speak on your account, and therefore until a few days ago the girl to whom I am engaged had no idea that I cared for her at all. You will get this. I have calculated, about Easter Day. I am going to be married on Easter Tuesday. My fiancee’s people live a mile and a-half from barracks. Be my dear little woman once more, and send me a line just to satisfy me that all is right on the morning of my marriage.- Ever your devoted and attached friend, Jocelyn Musgrave.”
So that had come to an end. Her eyes had been full of tears when the maid had put the letters into her hand. They were not full of tears as she came to the end of Jocelyn Musgrave’s explanation. Oh, no, no ! In the few minutes occupied in reading his letter the scales had fallen from her eyes: She realised that had she never been in love, really in love with Jocelyn Musgrave, she would not now he wearing the mourning garments of Laseelles Kesteven’s widow. She realised that neither he nor she had ever been truly in love one with another. Her mind, her heart, her thoughts were filled and brimming over with William Brandon.
Some words which she had been accustomed to hear Sunday after Sunday in her old country home in England kept ringing through her brain.
..............“ I will arise and go to my
Father ... I am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”
Yes, she would arise. She would go direct t > William Brandon, she would say to him : “ I am not fit to touch the latchet of your shoes, hut if you want me take me.”
[The End.]
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