Again Marie made no reply. Outside the patter of bare feet went right and left, donkeys jingled their chains, and the odour of the Southern night got more intense.
"Ah! my dear, we are lepers," said Lady Ardingly. "We are all wrong and bad, and we roll over each other in the gutter like these Arabs scrambling for backshish. We strive for one thing, which is wealth, and when we have got it we spend it on pleasure. You are not so, and the odd thing is that the pleasure we get does not please us. It is always something else we want. I sit and I say 'What news?' and when I am told I say 'What else?' and still 'What else?' and I am not satisfied. Younger folk than I do this, and they do that, and still, like me, they cry, 'What else? what else?' It means that we go after remedies for our _ennui_, for our leprosy, and there is no such remedy unless we become altogether different. Now, you are not so. Tell me your secret. Why are you different? Why can you sit still while we fidget? Why is it you can always keep clean in the middle of that muck-heap?"
Marie was moved and strangely touched. Her companion's face looked very haggard in the glare of the electric lamp overhead, and her eyes were weary and wistful.
"Dear Lady Ardingly," she said, "why do you say these things? I suppose my nature is not to fidget. I suppose, also, that the pleasures you refer to do not seem to me immensely attractive. I suppose I happen to be simple and not complex."
"Ah! that is not all," said the other. "Those are only little accidents."
Marie let her eyes wander a moment, then looked straight at Lady Ardingly.
By CHAUNCEY C. HOTCHKISS, author of "Betsy Ross," "In Defiance of the King," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
The delightful outdoor quality of Mr. Hotchkiss's novel forms a charming accompaniment to the adventurous happenings of the romance. The diary of a soldier of the New Hampshire Grants and the situation of an English youth holding a seigniory in Canada at the beginning of the French and Indian wars provide a variety of dramatic incident.
By E. H. COOPER. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
This story of English social and racing life introduces among other striking figures an American millionaire whose remarkable exploits on the turf involve some peculiar complications. The story is one of incident and odd complications, and its interest is unfailing.