Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

TEE GRIP OF TEE PAST 45 her feet cheerfully. "I'd marry him tomorrow if he came back. ' ' "And asked you to." "I dont believe I'd wait to be asked," said Belle, gently. "One doesn't coquet with real things, my dear." Long after her sister had gone, Jane Grey sat a prey to black, bitter thoughts. She, too, had her discovery, but tortures could not have wrung it from her in her sister 's presence. Pedro was back — a surveyor on the next plantation. Her husband had told her so, with a dour look in his small, porcine eyes. If Belle met him She looked about the careless room, as bare and unadorned as her own cheerless life. She thought of her old lover — his black eyes, the little way he had of flinging back his curls — and her pulses beat. Tossing aside her sewing, she smoothed her hair into the coiffure of years agone and caught up a rose from the pitcher on the table, thrusting it, in faded coquetry, into the coils. Then she went out of the room. She walked rapidly away from the house. It was a long, stolid, barren, prosy place, like its master, and seemed to be watching her thru a dozen blank, suspicious little eyes of glass. At the turn of the road was a long cotton field, and, leaning on the fence, stood a tall, lithe figure. ' ' Pedro ! ' ' cried Jane Grey, sharply —"Pedro!" "Good-afternoon. It is Jane, isn't it?" She could have struck the cool, rather amused face — or have kist it. Desperately she tried to hurt him. "Mrs. George Grey, if you please !" He showed neither surprise nor grief. "Ah, yes, Mrs. Grey " She stood by the fence, talking nervously of commonplace things, not guessing that altho Pedro remained provokingly unmoved, she was producing an impression, nevertheless. Behind her, screened by bushes, stood her husband and Craven, now his overseer. The fat, middle-aged man was breathing noisily and winking back the tears in his little eyes. "I told you," murmured the overseer. His old hatred for the handsome young Spaniard poisoned his voice. "They were once lovers. You'll have to keep your eyes open, or they'll soon be lovers again!" The sisters had spoken of everything else but the man whose name was on the tip of their thoughts. Now, other subjects running stale, they hesitated. Then Belle dared the word. "Pedro," she said— " Pedro— I have seen him and told him of the diary, Jane." "And he said?" hoarsely. "He told me that he loved me," breathed the girl, awed. Flaming, the other was on her feet. "No, no!" she panted. "You are shameless — you have no pride. Dont you know he was mine? Mine, I tell you — you shant have him — you shant ' ' "You seem to have forgotten George," drawled Belle, mocking. ' ' You shant have him, ' ' moaned the miserable wife, in dreary iteration. "Why, he kist me — what do you want of his left-over kisses? I had his real love — you cant have it! I tell you I love him ! "I have written him to meet me at the Cliff tomorrow at sunset," said her sister, not glancing at the pitiful figure groveling by the table. ' ' We are going to take a boat over to Akertown and be married. I came to say goodby, Jane. Wont you kiss me, sister, and wish me happiness ? ' ' Suddenly silent, Jane Grey pressed a cold kiss on the trembling lips and pushed her away. "Go on, child — forget what I said — I have a headache. I'll be better after I lie down. ' ' As Belle disappeared, she stooped swiftly and snatched a scrap of paper from where it had fallen at her sister's feet "The letter— I'll find Craven and give it to him. ' ' She was beyond the reach of reason or reflection, panting with laboring lungs, laughing