Warren Sheaf

ENTANGLEMENT
By S. Rhett Roman.

THE carriage turned and the horses, pampered and spirited, started rapidly down the hard, winding road, while Horton, waving his hand to two faces looking out the window of the quickly-disappearing train, jumped in his trap and followed.

"Come over and spend the evening, now that your friends have gone," Miss d'Aubert called to him as they left.

"How time flies!" remarked her aunt, with a sigh of placid content, weaving certain plans for the near future, in which her handsome niece was to take a prominent part.

"Do you not think May is a very charming month, cherie? Why not listen to reason, and let Robert persuade you? June is the best possible time to go abroad, and your uncle and I could join you later in Paris. We could spend the winter there if Robert can spare the time, and your sorrow will cease to overshadow you, my dear. You are too young, mon enfant, to be unhappy. There is so much in the years to come to gild life for you into happiness; our affection and Robert's devoted attachment will quickly chase away all the shadows if you will only be reasonable and consent."

A look of keen distress settled over Aurore's face, and although her lips parted as if to speak no sound came.

"It is for your welfare and happiness I press you, Aurore," resumed her aunt, with kindly emotion. "Robert Horton is your only close relative, child, and should the accidents of life take us old people away from you who would protect and care for you? Your father was my dearly loved brother. Were I to die, Aurore, I could not meet him if I left his only daughter alone and unprotected in this heartless and cruel world."

With a half sob Aurore threw a loving arm around Mrs. d'Aubert's neck and declared with loving reproach that she would not listen to words so sad and to eventualities too distant to be anything but shadows.

"You are trying to frighten me. Let us stay with you and dear old uncle, and let us frame no plans, or, if you will, let us three go abroad in June, you and uncle and I.

"We will visit together the old German towns you are so fond of, and when winter comes we will see."

But her aunt shook her head with smiling persistency, while fondly stroking Aurore's brown hair as it rested on her shoulders.

Like most gentle and placid natures, Mrs. d'Aubert, when once her mind was made up on a question, became tenacious and immovable and rarely ever abandoned her point.

"But, cherie, poor Bert is wearing his heart out," she continued, gently.

"You are unkind and not fair to him. And your father wished it. So why put it off? Nowhere would you find a kinder or better man than Robert Horton. And his untiring devotion! Does that count for nothing? Be reasonable, ma petite. Let us say the last ten days of May. Let me tell Bert"

"No! no! no! Not yet. Not in May!" pleaded Aurore, a poignant anguish clutching at her heart strings.

There was a long pause, while a carriage swept up the avenue and stopped.

"Ah, les jeunes filles," sighed Mrs. d'Aubert. "Very well, cherie, we will speak of it later."

Her aunt was placidly unmoved as Horton sprang out and came forward to help them alight. Mrs. d'Aubert looked with fond approval at the rather melancholy, dark, refined face of her nephew and thought with a sigh what a handsome and attractive man he was. She was almost put out as she leaned on his shoulder in getting out.

"When I'm auntie's age," Aurore said with a slightly embarrassed laugh, refusing the help of his outstretched hands and jumping on the marble steps of the porch, where Mrs. d'Aubert stood.

"I'll be over about eight," Horton said, rather shortly, as he turned, swung himself in his trap, took the lines and drove off.

"Tu n'es pas gentille," Mrs. d'Aubert said, with gentle reproach, as they went in the wide hall.

And Aurore asked herself while going up the broad winding stairway why it was that she could not greet her cousin, her old playmate of those sweet early years, of whom she had always been so fond with even ordinary cordiality, but instinctively repelled and repulsed him. Why she dreaded every approach to that one thought which she so well knew was dominant in his mind, and why she felt so miserable, so utterly wretched, when he looked at her with that appealing air of devotion she knew so well.

The March evening was warm and pleasant, and Aurore slipped into a lighter gown before going down to supper, only partly conscious of how its clinging transparency brightened the brilliance of her beauty.

"Where's Bert?" queried her uncle, looking at her admiringly as they sat in their handsome dining-room while Aurore deftly handled a silver tea service centuries old, family tradition declared.

This was always a pleasant time of the day, and her uncle loved to linger and chat before adjourning to the library to read his voluminous evening mail.

"Go back to visit Mayence, and Cologne, and Coblentz, and their wonderful art treasures and those queer attractive German villages? Spend a month at the Spa? Then to Berlin?

"A very pleasing plan. Why not execute it?"

Aurore and her uncle sat and planned while Mrs. d'Aubert had gone off and left them and was ensconced by the reading lamp with a late magazine.

And Aurore was eager and radiant, not at the anticipated pleasure of a tour abroad, as her uncle thought, but in the hope of postponing that fateful future which loomed up so immutably.

That future, planned by her father, approved by all, urged so persistently by her dear and loving old aunt, and pleaded for by Robert Horton, with the silent, but passionate, entreaty of eyes that never left her, and by a thousand acts of ceaseless devotion, from which her heart turned with a horrible ingratitude, Aurore thought miserably.

"Ah, but, little one, your aunt and I are too old for such junketings," her uncle resumed, with a shake of the head. "You must listen to good advice and let Robert be your guide and companion. We will join you in the fall in London or Paris, and settle down to a pleasant winter of enjoyment—such a winter as your youth and beauty deserves."

With a loving gesture he went toward the library in search of his mail, and Aurore, with a sigh, passed out on the porch.

Aurore sat on the marble steps and looked out over the moonlit garden, and determined to have it out once for all with her innermost thoughts, and to come to a distinct understanding of all those chaotic, troublous feelings which had so insidiously taken possession of her.

The faint chimes of the village church bell came on the still, odorous air, some fireflies went flitting through the flowering shrubs, and a profound melancholy took possession of Aurore—a yearning she could not define, while reason asserted itself with cold insistence.

"You do not even know him. You saw him for one short half hour, that memorable night when wind and storm were abroad; that winter night, whose dawn severed the frail thread of a life so dear to you.

"How do you know," said reason, "that he remembers you? That he has given you a single thought?

"Because he looked full and keenly and long, your vanity has supposed that there was interest and admiration in a glance only remarkable because it came from eyes of singular and splendid forcefulness.

"You must, you must thrust this silly recollection from heart and brain. You must get rid of it. Bury it under cares, ambitions, anything! And rub out from memory the lines of that strong, fine face, which haunts you so persistently, so cruelly.

"What are his ties and affections? You know not.

"Had he cared to seek you, could he not easily have done so?

"Forget him. Blot him from memory and give a gracious hearing to the friend of your childhood, to the tried and true affection of all these years, which has never varied, never lessened, and in doing so give pleasure and happiness to those who have taken you to their hearts, and who shelter you with their kindly love."

So reason spoke.

And Aurore, glancing back through the doors which opened down on the porch, saw in the beautiful oak-paneled room, rich in rare decorations, on whose walls hung the portraits of a proud old ancestry, the handsome, elderly, gray-haired people whose cup of content would be full, she well knew, if the plan they cherished was carried out to fulfillment.

Aurore leaned against the tall column of the porch and looked out at the radiance of the night, and as the soft, plaintive call of a bird broke the stillness it seemed to her that her heart would beat its last pulsation and die, this calm, glorious night of spring, for reproachful in the intensity of its deep, ineffable look came back the face of her dreams, plain and distinct in the soft, shadowy light.

With a stifled cry Aurore covered her face with her hands.

"Did I frighten you, Aurore? I thought you heard me come out on the porch," said Horton, with a grieved eagerness.

"What is it, sweetheart? You look as if you had seen a ghost. Why, you are trembling, and your hands are icy cold. What an impressionable little child it is, in spite of its 20 years," said Horton, smiling tenderly, while chafing Aurore's hands with loving gentleness.

"Now sit down and tell me what you were dreaming about, and what wicked thoughts were absorbing you. They must have been villainous, to have blanched your cheeks that way.

"Why, Aurore, child, you are as pale as these lilies I brought you. I know they are your favorite flower."

Yes, Aurore's heart must have died when she gave that stifled cry, for it seemed too cold and numb. But memory still lived, for, holding the lilies of the valley, she remembered that someone had stooped and picked up from the wet stones a few similar frail blossoms, broken from her hand, one night long ago.

They sat side by side on the marble steps, and the two elderly people inside peered lovingly at them, and nodded and talked, with a pleased laugh to each other, and laid bright plans.

And Aurore gazed silently out at the calm ethereal light, resting so peacefully over all things, while Horton, with desperate emotion, poured out his soul to her, while a palpitating stillness seemed to hover around.

"The dream of my youth and of manhood, that dream, sweetheart, which holds for me life's ambitions and dearest hopes!" Robert Horton was saying.

Like a faint sigh, the scent of the lilies of the valley came to Aurore, and the stillness of the moonlit night enwrapped her. There was a slight bustle indoors in the handsome library.

Mrs. d'Aubert looked up, paused, and came forward.

"A dispatch for you, Bert, from your friend," she said, pausing in the doorway.—N. O. Times-Democrat.