CHAPTER XXIII.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 282, 18 July 1888, Page 3

CHAPTER XXIII.

juditii's sorrow. At first, as is always the case, there was a wondrous commotion over this scandal in high life. The affair was di&cussed from the Scottish border to Land's End, for the Earl of Strathspey was a noted man ; ib filled the public journals, and constituted the topic lor all the tea drinkings for a month after ward. As a matter of course, public sympathywent with the earl. A British peer could not possibly be in the wrong. Ib was his wifej his iair, weak wife ! ' Frailty, thy name is woman !' Lady Neville took the matter in. hand, and soon promulgated the popular theory. Whatever Lady Neville did was popular. ' Poor Angus !' she said, referring to the ear], 'his domestic afflictions are so severe ! He was a man to-be pitied. His countess is iv bane ! That is the secret. There was a taint of madness in the Aukland blood ; she warned the earl of ib before he married her.' Whoever would have dreamed of such a romance as that shepherd boy in the Tyrol being Lord Strathspey's son but a maniac ? The earl believed the boy to bo her own child, born before their marriage ; Lady Neville did not know about that. There was a diversity of opinion relative to the child's age. But the countess had acted shamefully, and was not to be trusted in anything. Lord Strathspey intended taking im mediate steps for a divorce, and she hoped it would bo all o\er and forgotten before the children were old enough to comprehend the matter. See intended to bring them up in utter ignorance of their poor, insane mother. This was the popular belief, and the credulous British public swallowed ie without asking a question. Meanwhile, Lord Strathspey, hoping to drown some of his bitter anguish, took himself off to foreign lands, leaving the divorce, and his children, and everything else to take care of themselves, or to be taken care of by his capable relatives, the Nevilles. His countess settled down very quietly in her old home at Aukland Oaks, with Judith as companion, and some old and devoted servants, who had served her dead father. Very few friends, apart from these, had the once flattered and brilliant countess. Public opinion was almost unanimously against her. Even her lawyer, Sir Henry Galbraith, into whoso hands she submitted the case of her little boy in the Tyrol, even he, while he took the case in hand, and determined to make the best he could of it, looked upon the whole thing as a supreme bit of nonsense, and upon his client herself, as a weak, addle-brained, woman, who would be much safer lodged in a madhouse. Only one of her former friends stood by her in her fallen fortune. This one was old Doctor Benfrew. He made his way down to 'Aukland Oaks to pay her a eonsolotary' visit. The old Scotchman had a keen brain, and was intensely practical in his shrewd common sense, yet strange enough he believed every word of the strange story concerning the Tyrol lad, on the first hearing. Arid lie went down to Oaks to' offer his old patient his aid' land consolation; (To be. Continued.) ' " '

A great hardship— An iron steamer,