Only a girl's love
540--A Daughter of Darkness By Ida Reade Allen
541--Her Evil Genius By Adelaide Stirling
543--The Veiled Bride By Laura Jean Libbey
544--In Love's Name By Emma Garrison Jones
545--Well Worth Winning By St. George Rathborne
546--The Career of Mrs. Osborne By Helen Milecete
549--Tempted by Love By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
550--Saved from Herself By Adelaide Stirling
551--Pity--Not Love By Laura Jean Libbey
552--At the Court of the Maharaja By Louis Tracy
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BOOKS FOR MEN.
The Nick Carter stories in the NEW MAGNET LIBRARY.
The Howard W. Erwin stories in the FAR WEST LIBRARY.
The William Wallace Cook stories in the NEW FICTION LIBRARY.
The Dumas stories in the SELECT LIBRARY.
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The Mrs. Georgie Sheldon stories in the NEW EAGLE SERIES.
The Charles Garvice stories in the NEW EAGLE SERIES.
The Bertha Clay stories in the BERTHA CLAY LIBRARY.
The Southworth stories in the SOUTHWORTH LIBRARY.
The Mrs. Mary J. Holmes stories in the EAGLE and SELECT LIBRARIES.
BOOKS FOR BOYS.
The Burt L. Standish stories in the NEW MEDAL LIBRARY.
The Horatio Alger stories in the MEDAL and NEW MEDAL LIBRARIES.
The Oliver Optic stories in the MEDAL and NEW MEDAL LIBRARIES.
The Edward C. Taylor stories in the NEW MEDAL LIBRARY.
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STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
* * * * * *
ONLY A GIRL'S LOVE
by
CHARLES GARVICE
New York
Street & Smith, Publishers
Why Take a Chance?
Most everybody thinks that the public library is a mighty fine
institution--teaches people to read, and all that. Well, so it does,
but does any one ever think of the great risk that a person, who takes
a book out of a public library, runs of catching some contagious
disease?
Every time a bacteriological examination is made of the public-library
book, germs of every known disease are found among its pages. Probably,
from your own experience, you know that lots of people never think of
taking a book from the public library, until some one in their family
is sick and wants something to read.
As records prove that ninety per cent of the demand for books at the
public libraries is for works of fiction, it strikes us that the
reading public would do better to patronize the S. & S. novel list
which contains hundreds of books to be found in the public libraries,
and many hundreds of others just as good and interesting.
The price of the S. & S. novels is a low one indeed to pay for
protection from disease-laden literature. Why run the risk, then, when
you can get a fresh, clean book for little money and thus insure your
health?
STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_
NEW YORK
The S. & S. Novels Have No Rivals
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STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_
NEW YORK
ONLY A GIRL'S LOVE.
CHAPTER I.
It is a warm evening in early Summer; the sun is setting behind a long
range of fir and yew-clad hills, at the feet of which twists in and
out, as it follows their curves, a placid, peaceful river. Opposite
these hills, and running beside the river, are long-stretching meadows,
brilliantly green with fresh-springing grass, and gorgeously yellow
with newly-opened buttercups. Above, the sunset sky gleams and glows
with fiery red and rich deep chromes. And London is almost within sight.
It is a beautiful scene, such as one sees only in this England of
ours--a scene that defies poet and painter. At this very moment it
is defying one of the latter genus; for in a room of a low-browed,
thatched-roofed cottage which stood on the margin of the meadow, James
Etheridge sat beside his easel, his eyes fixed on the picture framed in
the open window, his brush and mahl-stick drooping in his idle hand.
Unconsciously he, the painter, made a picture worthy of study. Tall,
thin, delicately made, with pale face crowned and set in softly-flowing
white hair, with gentle, dreamy eyes ever seeking the infinite and
unknown, he looked like one of those figures which the old Florentine
artists used to love to put upon their canvases, and which when one
sees even now makes one strangely sad and thoughtful.
The room was a fitting frame for the human subject; it was a true
painter's studio--untidy, disordered, and picturesque. Finished and
unfinished pictures hung or leant against the walls, suits of armor,
antique weapons, strange costumes littered the floor or hung limply
over mediæval chairs; books, some in bindings which would have made the
mouth of a connoisseur water, lay open upon the table or were piled in
a distant corner. And over all silence--unbroken save by the sound of
the water rushing over the weir, or the birds which flitted by the open
window--reigned supreme.
The old man sat for some time listening to Nature's music, and lost in
dreamy admiration of her loveliness, until the striking of the church
clock floated from the village behind the house; then, with a start,
he rose, took up his brushes, and turned again to the easel. An hour
passed, and still he worked, the picture growing beneath the thin,
skillful hand; the birds sank into silence, the red faded slowly from
the sky, and night unfolded its dark mantle ready to let it fall upon
the workaday world.
Silence so profound took to itself the likeness of loneliness; perhaps
the old man felt it so, for as he glanced at the waning light and lay
his brush down, he put his hand to his brow and sighed. Then he turned
the picture on the easel, made his way with some little difficulty,
owing to the litter, across the room, found and lit an old briar-wood
pipe, and dropping into the chair again, fixed his eyes upon the scene,
and fell into the dreamy state which was habitual with him.
So lost in purposeless memory was he, that the opening of the door
failed to rouse him.
It was opened very gently and slowly, and as slowly and noiselessly a
young girl, after pausing a moment at the threshold, stepped into the
room, and stood looking round her and at the motionless figure in the
chair by the window.
She stood for full a minute, her hand still holding the handle of the
door, as if she were not certain of her welcome--as if the room were
strange to her, then, with a little hurried pressure of her hand to her
bosom, she moved toward the window.
As she did so her foot struck against a piece of armor, and the noise
aroused the old man and caused him to look round.
With a start he gazed at the girl as if impressed with the idea that
she must be something unsubstantial and visionary--some embodiment of
his evening dreams, and so he sat looking at her, his artist eye taking
in the lithe, graceful figure, the beautiful face, with its dark eyes
and long, sweeping lashes, its clearly penciled brows, and soft, mobile
lips, in rapt absorption.
It is possible that if she had turned and left him, never to have
crossed into his life again, he would have sunk back into dreamland,
and to the end of his days have regarded her as unreal and visionary;
but, with a subtle, graceful movement, the girl threaded the maze of
litter and disorder and stood beside him.
He, still looking up, saw that the beautiful eyes were dim, that the
exquisitely curved lips were quivering with some intense emotion, and
suddenly there broke upon the silence a low, sweet voice:
"Are you James Etheridge?"
The artist started. It was not the words, but the tone--the voice that
startled him, and for a brief second he was still dumb, then he rose,
and looking at her with faint, trembling questioning, he answered:
"Yes, that is my name. I am James Etheridge."
Her lips quivered again, but still, quietly and simply, she said:
"You do not know me? I am Stella--your niece, Stella."
The old man threw up his head and stared at her, and she saw that he
trembled.
"Stella--my niece--Harold's child!"
"Yes," she said, in a low voice, "I am Stella."
"But, merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, with agitation, "how did
you come here? Why--I thought you were at the school there in
Florence--why--have you come here alone?"
Her eyes wandered from his face to the exquisite scene beyond, and at
that moment her look was strangely like his own.
"Yes, I came alone, uncle," she said.
"Merciful Heaven!" he murmured again, sinking into his chair. "But
why--why?"
The question is not unkindly put, full, rather, of a troubled
perplexity and bewilderment.
Stella's eyes returned to his face.
"I was unhappy, uncle," she said, simply.
"Unhappy!" he echoed, gently--"unhappy! My child, you are too young to
know what the word means. Tell me"--and he put his long white hand on
her arm.
The touch was the one thing needed to draw them together. With a
sudden, yet not abrupt movement, she slid down at his side and leant
her head on his arm.
"Yes, I was very unhappy, uncle. They were hard and unkind. They meant
well perhaps, but it was not to be borne. And then--then, after papa
died, it was so lonely, so lonely. There was no one--no one to care for
me--to care whether one lived or died. Uncle, I bore it as long as I
could, and then I--came."
The old man's eyes grew dim, and his hand rose gently to her head, and
smoothed the rich, silky hair.
"Poor child! poor child!" he murmured, dreamily, looking not at her,
but at the gloaming outside.
"As long as I could, uncle, until I felt that I must run away, or
go mad, or die. Then I remembered you, I had never seen you, but I
remembered that you were papa's brother, and that, being of the same
blood, you must be good, and kind, and true; and so I resolved to come
to you."
His hand trembled on her head, but he was silent for a moment; then he
said, in a low voice:
"Why did you not write?"
A smile crossed the girl's face.
"Because they would not permit us to write, excepting under their
dictation."
He started, and a fiery light flashed from the gentle, dreamy eyes.
"No letters were allowed to leave the school unless the principals had
read them. We were never out alone, or I would have posted a letter
unknown to them. No, I could not write, or I would have done so,
and--and--waited."
"You would not have waited long, my child," he murmured.
She threw back her head and kissed his hand. It was a strange gesture,
more foreign than English, full of the impulsive gracefulness of the