The Shield of Silence | Page 3

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 let him blot out this ache for Merry." But that was not to be.
And Meredith wrote her letters to her sister and smiled upon her husband--for after the third month of her marriage that was the best she could do for either of them. All the ideals of her self-blinded life were being swept away in the glaring flame of reality.
Thornton was still infatuated and went to great lengths to prove to his