Why She Was Glad

Why She Was Glad.

"I did not think you could be so foolish, Agnes. What! jealous of a mere child like Kate!"

The speaker was a man between 35 and 40. Handsome he certainly was, kind hearted and generous all could testify who knew him.

The person addressed was in the full maturity of womanhood, with a thoughtful and earnest look in her face that showed that she had felt and suffered beyond the majority of her sex.

"Kate is not a child, but a woman, Arthur," she replied, "a very pretty woman, as no one knows better than you."

Arthur Reeves looked sharply at his companion.

Agnes understood that look and said steadily:

"I saw you beneath the elm last evening. I had heard many things before, but could not credit them. The evidence of my own senses I must believe."

"Go on," he said, with forced coolness. "I suppose I may as well take my lecture now as any time."

"I am not going to lecture you, Arthur, nor even reproach you. The time for that has passed. I simply wish to convince you that you have been mistaken in the feelings that you have professed to cherish for me--that we have both been mistaken."

"I love you, Agnes. You know that."

"And yet I am not sufficient for you. Your eyes, if not your lips, have said the same to Kate Norton as well as others."

"This is the sheerest folly, Agnes! My feelings for Kate are as those I cherish for my little sister Ellen."

"If you think so you deceive yourself. And whether it be so or not it is evidence that the feelings aroused in her heart are of a far different nature."

"You do Kate great injustice, Agnes; she is as innocent hearted as a child."

"You must have a strange idea of the innocence of childhood. Kate Norton had little reputation to lose before she met you. She has less now. A girl that can openly boast that there is not a married lady of her acquaintance but what is jealous of her had as little principle as delicacy."

"I tell you again, Agnes, that I do not care for Kate. I have paid her some attention, it is true, but it is because I know she has few pleasures, and I wanted to make her stay as pleasant as possible."

"And yet, when, after months of close confinement in the schoolroom, I sought a brief respite from many cares, the change of scene and air I so sorely needed, you did not think it necessary to devote yourself so assiduously to me, who, if half your assurances are to be believed, have a claim upon you more sacred than other. You could even leave me alone for days--not on account of business--but in pursuit of pleasures in which I had no share."

Arthur Reeves winced at these words.

"You are jealous Agnes, and a jealous woman can never see things as they are."

The two had been walking along a wooded path. They had now reached the brow of a hill, from which diverged two paths--one leading to Agnes' home, the other to the village, whose glittering spires could be seen in the distance.

"Our paths lie separate here, Arthur!"

"And our life paths as well? Is that what you wish to say, Agnes?"

No one knew all it cost her to utter those calmly spoken words--certainly not the man who, winning that loving heart, had held it so tightly.

Motionless, with arms folded tightly across his chest, he watched her retreating form. Perhaps there was a faint hope in his heart that she would pause or turn her head, but Agnes was ont the woman to falter or look back in the path she had chosen.

She kept steadily on, not even turning when she reached the door, which, closing upon her, shut him out as completely from her heart and life as if he had never been.

Then he felt as he never had before, if not all that she had been, all that she might have been to him.

It was Arthur Reeves' misfortune that he could not resist the voice of flattery, especially from the lips of a pretty woman. Did such smile upon him or hang upon his accents with delight, partly real, partly feigned, for the time begin she swayed and seemed to fill his heart wholly.

He wooed Agnes Irwin eagerly and persistently--for she was not a woman to be won unsought--never resting until he knew that her whole heart was his.

It was not that he did not know how rich was the treasure he had won; to be loved so entirely and exclusively would have been gratifying to any man, but he was one of those with whom a love once won has lost its charm.

Arthur made no attempt to change a purpose that he well knew was unchangeable. He married a few months after, and no one prayed for fervently for his happiness than did she from whose life he had taken much of its bloom and brightness.

Some years after, when what we have recorded was looked upon as a troubled dream, in taking up a paper her attention was arrested by the following paragraph:

"Arthur Reeves, a well known merchant in ----, has eloped with a gay young widow. The guilty pair left for Europe on the last steamer. The scoundrel leaves behind him a wife, whose conduct has been irreproachable, and three children. Mrs. Reeves returned yesterday to her father's house, which she left six years ago as a happy bride."

When the shock that this gave her had subsided, what grateful emotion swelled her heart that hers were not those worse than fatherless children; that she was not that more than widowed wife, returning in shame and sorrow to her father's house!

--Boston Globe.