The Shield of Silence | Page 3

heart hungered for them.
"Ridge House is in the making," she wrote. "I am going slow, making
no mistakes. I am asking some Sisters who, like me, have fallen by the
way, to come here and help me with my scheme, and in the confusion
of readjustment, two young girls, who ought to be forming their own
plans, would be sadly in the way.
"Go abroad, my dears, take"--here Sister Angela named a woman she
could trust to help, not hinder--"and learn to walk alone at last."
Doris accepted the advice and the little party went to Italy.
"Here," she said, "Merry shall have the beauty she craves and she shall
learn what life means, as well."
And Meredith's learning began.
They had only been in Italy a month when George Thornton appeared.
He was young, handsome, and already so successful in business that
older men cast approving eyes upon him. He had chosen, at the outset
of his career, to go to the Philippines and accepted an appointment
there. He had devoted himself so rigidly to his duties that his health
began to show the strain and he was taking his first, well-won, vacation
when he met the Fletchers.
Thornton's past had been spent largely with men who, like himself,
were making their way among people, and in an environment in which
the finer aspects of life were disregarded. He had enjoyed himself,
made himself popular, and for the rest he had waited until such a time
as his success would make choice possible. When he met Meredith
Fletcher he felt the time had come. The girl's exquisite aloofness, her
fineness and sweetness, bewitched him. The real meaning of her
character did not interest him at all. Here was something that he wanted;
the rest would be an easy conquest. Thornton had always got what he
wanted and lay siege to Meredith's heart at once.

His approach, while it swept Meredith before it, naturally aroused fear
and apprehension in Doris. To Meredith, Thornton was an ideal
materialized; to Doris, he was a menace to all that she held sacred. She
distrusted him for the very traits that appealed to her sister. But she
dared not oppose, for to every inquiry she hurriedly made--and there
was need of hurry--she received only favourable reports.
Thornton's own fortune and prospects set aside any fears as to
mercenary designs; he had no near relatives, but distant cousins in
England were people of refinement and culture and on excellent terms
with Thornton. Breathlessly Thornton carried everything before him.
Six weeks after he met Meredith he married her.
"Why, you do not know the child," Doris had faltered when the hasty
marriage was proposed, "I'm only learning to know her myself. She has
never grown up. She sees life as she used to see it through the gates of
the park in which she played as a little girl. She has been locked away.
It is appalling. I could not believe, unless I knew, that any one could be
like Merry."
Of course Thornton did not understand.
"Let me have the key," he jokingly said, "let me lead Merry out. It will
be the biggest thing of my life."
And Doris knew that unless the key were given he would break the lock,
so Meredith was married in the little American chapel on the hillside
and she looked as if she were walking in a love-filled dream as she
went out of Doris's life.
Thornton took his wife to the Philippines by way of her New York
home. For a week they stayed in it, and it was there that the first sense
of loss touched Meredith. The stirring effect of all that she had recently
gone through was wearing away, and Doris, and all that Doris meant in
the past, haunted the big, quiet house.
"This will never do," thought Thornton, and for the first time he sensed
the power the older sister had over the younger. It was already making

its way into his kingdom, and Thornton never shared what was his
own!
Doris remained abroad for a time, readjusting her life as one does who
is maimed. Her devotion to Meredith, she saw now, had been her one
passion--to what could she turn?
The letters that presently came from Meredith, while they set much of
her fear at rest, made her feel more lonely, nor did they seem to set her
free to make permanent plans. She sank into a waiting mood--waiting
for letters!
"I'll play around Europe for awhile," she whimsically decided. "I'll buy
things for that chapel Sister Angela is planning, and polish my manners.
And," here Doris grew grave, "I'll think of David Martin! I wish I could
love Davey enough to marry him as I feel he wants me to--and