A Wonderful Woman.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 444, 8 February 1890, Page 6

A Wonderful Woman.

By MAY AGNES FLEMING, Author of “Guy Earleseourt’s Wife,” “-A Temble Secret,” “ Lost for a Woman,” •‘A Mad Marriage,” etcBOOK. 11. CHAPTER VI. SOMETHING VERY STRANGE. * And your picnic is inevitable, Lady Dangerfield ; and one must go and grill alive, and yawn all day, and get one s complexion destroyed with the boiling seaside sun, and call it pleasure. You mean well, Ginevra, I dare say, but your ceaseless pleasure excursions grow to be ceaseless bores.’ Lady Cecil said all this in the slowest, softest, sleepiest, laziest possible tone of voice. She was lying on a sofa, in a loose, white morning robe, her bronze hair all damp, and loose, and out of curl, a book in her hand, and her gold-brown eyes full of lazy languor. . ... Lady Dangerfield, got up in elaborate walking costume, had just bustled in she always bustled and made a noise and had burst forth in a torrent of reproaches at finding her indolent cousin still in a state of semi-undress. ‘You laziest, you most indolent of mortals ! get up instantly and be off and dress. The carriages will be here in half an hour—twenty minutes 1 tell you —and you haven’t one thing on. The picnic is inevitable, and seeing you were one of the first to organise it, I think it is a little too disgraceful to find you like this at the last moment. ‘ Like this is so very comfortable though, Ginevra. My novel is really interesting. Countess Aglae, on the eve of her marriage with the Duke of Crowndiatnonds, runs away with a charming young head-groom, whose ordinary conversation reads like blank verse. Well if I must, I must, I suppose.’ She threw aside her novel and arose. *ltis so •preposterously fine and sunshiny this morning that I am certain we will have a storm before night, and come home drenched. Half an hour did you say, Ginevra, before we start? Tranquillise your nerves then, dear —I shall be ready in half the time.’' , A week had passed since Sir Arthurs arrival —seven long summer days and nigh ts under the same roof with Lady Cecil, the greatest flirt of the season. What did he think of her by this time? No one could have told ; not the young lady, certainly, to whom his manner was calm, friendly, and genial, but as far removed from her experience of love-making, as it was possible to imagine. Not her father, watching him, furtively, impatiently ; he Dore himself towards her with the same distant, somewhat stiff courtesy he showed his hostess and the other ladies who visited Scarswood. „ T , How was ifc going to end ? W ould he propose or would he, after another week or so,say, - Good-bye, Lady Cecil,’in the same, cool, grave, unsmiling way in which he now said good morning _ and good-night? It was such an inscrutable face, that face of his, that it told nothing. This solemn, uplifted manner, those grave tones speaking grave sentences,might be his way of making love, for all the earl knew. For Cecil herself, she liked it and liked him all the better for letting her so tranquilly alone. All women —the most hardened coquette among them—like men best who don’t lower their flag at once. bho was bewitchingly pretty, and fresh and bright, and knew ifc beyond doubt; but as far as she could see, all her beauty, and brightness and fascinations were so many arrows that glanced off his polished chain-mail armour. She was singularly free from vanity ; in a calm way she was conscious of her own great beauty, as she was proud of her old name, but the smallness of personal conceit she had never felt. And reassured by Sir Arthur’s manner, she let herself grow friendly, and pleasant, and familiar, as it was her genial nature to be. She got down off her stilts and walked with him, and talked with him, and found, when properlv drawn out, he could talk well. He could tell her, by the hour together, of fair, foreign lands, of the East, every inch of which he knew every sacred place of which he bad visited. He could tell her of Australia and its wonderful hidden wealth—of bright, busy trans-Atlantic cities—of California, where he had lived for months among camps and mines, and the reckless men, the sweepings of the world, who fly there for safety or for gold. He told her of Algiers, where he had wintered last year, and of how. narrowly his life had been saved. Ho had had many hair-breadth escapes, but none so critical as this. Lost on the desert, a flock of wild Bedouins, inflamed with rapine and liquor, had swept down upon him with shrill cries. He fought against terrible odds as long as he could, then, just as a lance head bad pierced him, a horseman had ridden down like the wind, arid with a ringing English cheer had laid about his right and left, like a lion. Wherever that flashing blade fell, an Arab bit the dust. Then, faint and sick from loss of blood, he sliped from the saddle, and opened his eyes are his own quarters in Algiers. * And the gallant Englishman who saved you ?’ Lady Cecil breathlessly asked. Sir Arthur smiled. ‘The gallant Englishman was an Irishman. A very tiger to fight. His name among the Arabs was as great a source of dread as that of Cceur de Lion to the Saracens, or Black Douglas bo the Lowland. He was a captain of Chasseurs, his name, O’Donnell. She was sitting beneath the open window. As he pronounced the name ho looked at her, but sbe had turned suddenly and was gazing steadfastly, at the blue summer sky. He looked at her, then spoke again, slowly. ‘ And he knew you,’ he Baid. ‘ Yes,’ Lady Cecil’s tones had changed a little ; but slie turned now, and the brown ; eyes met the grey ones quite calmly. ‘ Yes, I did once know a Redmond O'Donnell_eix years ago, I think —in Ireland. He mentioned knowing me, did he?’ ‘By the merest chance. In his quarters one day I came across a book, a very hand-c.-i some copy of “ Marmion,” with your name on the fly leaf. You had lent it to him, ■j •• it - appeared, and it had never been rev. turned.’

ii'/Mi* Captain O’Donnell seems fated to save i;.;people’s lives,’ said Lady Cecil, laughing : he saved mine from drowning. Did he v.-Itell you of it? No? That is like his reti--I*. cence. Are you aware be is in England ?’ ill pw-'Noi ' I am not surprised to hear it, d-though. He mentioned casually meaning f) Ho 'go out to America—to New Orleans—for •'Bis sister, and fetch her over, and leave her 1 7 with their friends in France. A fine fellow - -Ilia'brave' fellow—a worthy descendant of * h is once princely house. 's&vfXLady Cecil said nothing, but that night at parting, she gave Sir Arthur her hand with a kindly cordiality she had never Bhown before. 'He .grows on one,’ she said, thought*

fully, to her cousin. ‘I begin to like him.’..., ■ i,. Ginevra shrugged her shoulders. ‘So much the better, dear, for all concerned. Thirty thousand a year is a powerful inducement, 1 must confess, though he doesn’t gi*ow on tree. He’s a prig, as I said before—a solemn pedantic prig—who glowers one out of countenance with his great, solemn, owl eyes, and who can neither dance nor play croquet, who doesn’t know one game on the cards, and who invariably treads on one’s train. I hate clumsy men, and I’m afraid 1 shall hate my future cousin-in-law.' .< The solemn, owl eyes Lady Dangerfield spoke of irritated her beyond measure by the way in which thoy watched her animated flirtation with Major Frankland. A flirting married woman was an anomaly the tall Cornish baronet could in no wise understand. On this point he was more savagely uncivilised than even Lady Cecil herself. His dark eyes looked in grave wonder and disapprobation at what went on before them—Major Frankland making love a la mode, to Lady Dangerfield, while Lady Dangerfield’s husband either shut himself up in his study with his friends, the black beetles, or else glared in impotent jealous wrath at his wife and her attendant cavalier.

He and Lady Cecil had grown friends surely and imperceptibly. They were a gieab deal together, and bho noble brow of my Earl of Ruysland began to clear. Cecil knew what she was about, of course ; she wasn’t going to fall at his feet the instant he arrived ; if he were a true knight he would be willing to woo and win so fair a lady. With her charming face to plead her cause, his charming fortune bo plead his, there could be no manner of doubt as to the issue

Sir Arthur, Lad3' Cecil, the earl, and a young lady in apple-green muslin went together in the barouche. Lady Dangerfield drove Major Frankland in his pony phaeton. The rest of the young ladies followed in a second barouche, with two cavaliers on horseback. The only married lady of the party being the barouet’s wife —who played chaperone and propriety! Sir Peter had discovered a new specimen of tbe Saturine Pavonia Major, and did not go. lb was an intensely hob day, the sun pouring down its fiery heat from a sky as deeply blue as thatofltaly—theheatquivering Jin a white mist over the sea. Nob a breath of air stirred, the sea lay asleep, one vast polished lake, under that globe of molten gold. ‘ I knew we would grill to death—l said so,’ Lady Cecil remarked ; ‘ but where is the use of warning Ginevra when she is bent upon anything ? The three children survived the Fiery Furnace, and we may survive this, but 1 doubt it.’ ‘Don’t be so plaintive, Queenio,’ her father interposed ; ‘ you’ll survive, I dare say, but you won’t have a shred of complexion left. You blonde women never can stand sunshine. Now, Ginerva is the happy possessor of a complexion which all thesuns of Equatorial Africacouldn’bdarken or spoil. Seeing,’ this s ott.o voice, ‘ that it’s made up of Blanc de Perie and liquid rouge.’ ‘lc is warm,’ Sir Arthur remarked, looking at the fair lily face beside him ; 1 and there is not a tree, nor a shrub even, to ward it off. Suppose we go in search of verdure and shade, as we used to do in the Great Desert. My traveller’s instinct cells me there is an oasis not far off.’ ‘ Yes ; go by all means, Queenie,’ murmured the earl; ‘ and when you have found that oasis send me back word, and I’ll join you. At present I am reduced to that state in which a man’s brain feels like melted butter, and each limb several tons weight. I shall lie down here on the sand and compose myself to balmy slumber.’ Sir Arthur profiered his arm—Lady Cecil took it. The picnic party were pretty well dispersed by this time. Ginevra and the major and one of the rector’s daughters had put off to sea in a little boat ; Squire Talbot was making himself agreeable to the young lady in apple green muslin ; the rest had paired off like the procession of animals in a child’s Noah's Ark. As well go on an exploring expedition with Sir Arthur as remain there to watch the slumbers of the author of her being ; and so the Cornish baronet and the earl’s daughter started in search of the oasis. It was not unpleasant being alone with Sir Arthur. In company, as a rule, he had nothing whatever to say ; society Smalltalk was as Greek to him ; the new styles, the latest fashionable novel, the last prima donna or danseuse —all these topics were Sanscrit to him, or thereabout. Bub alone with an appreciative listener, he could talk, and talk well—not of his travels alone—on all subjects. He spoke of things high above the reach of most of the men she had met. and Lady Cecil being a young lady of very fair intellect, as the female intellect goes, appreciated him, was interested, delighted, quite breathless indeed in her absorption at times.

They had gone on now for nearly a mile very slowly, of course, with the mid-day thermometer at that ridiculous height in the shade, where shade there was none. He was telling her of a. frightful gorilla hunt he had once had in Africa, and just at the moment when the climax was reached when the gorilla came in sight, and Jun dy Cecil’s eyes and lips were apart, and breathless, he stopped as if he had been shot.

‘ Lady Cecil,’lie cried, ‘it is going to rain.’ Patter ! one great drop, size of a pea, fell spalsh on Lady Cecil’s startled upturned face. The sun still shone dazzlingly, but a huge black thunder cloud had gathered over their heads, threatening explosion. Plump came another great drop on Lady Cecil’s pink silk and white lace parasol. Oh, such a flimsy shield from a rain storm, and Lady Cecil’s Paris hat. had cost ten guiueas only the week before, and Lady Cecil’s summer dress was of Swiss muslin and lace, and her bronze slippers with their gay rosettes, delightful for dry sand and sunshine, but not to be thought of in connection with a summer shower. ‘ What shall we do ?’ she exclaimed. s I don’t mind getting my death of cold in a drenching, but to go back and face the rest, sheltered, no doubt, by the carriage,—all dripping and drowned—no, Sir Arthur, I can’t do that.’

Sir Arthur had been scanning the horizon with eagle glance. ‘ I see a house,’ he said ; Vat least I see a tall chimney, and where there is a chimney there must be shelter. Let us make for it, Lady Cecil—we can reach it in five minutes, if we run. Can vou fun ?’

‘ Certainly 1 car, run,’ answered La Reine Blanche. ‘ What a question for you to ask, of all the people, as though you didn’t stand and laugh at me the afternoon you arrived, romping like a lunatic with Ginevra’s children. Oh, dear ! how fast the drops are coming. Now, then, Sir Arthur—a fair field and no favour!’

And then, with her clear, merry laugh, the haughty, handsome belle of last season gathered up her. flowing, flimsy skirts, bowed her bright bead, and V? sped away like a ’ deer before the storm. Sir Arthur ran, too; one may be never so dignified, and yet scamper for their lives before a thunder storm. And Lady Cecil laughed, and Sir Arthur

laughed, and faster, faster, faster, fell thej light., black drops,, and twenty years Of ordinary acquaintance could not have brought them so near together as that hour. On and on, faster and yet faster, the rain pursuing them like an avenging fury, a great peal of thunder booming above their heads. Blacker and bigger that great cloud grows; patter, patter, falls the rain ; it will be down in torrents directly. There is a flash, blindingly bright, and then—Heaven be praised! the tall chimney is reached, and it proves to be a house ! Sir Arthur flings wide the gate and they skurry into the garden, thickly sheltered by fir-trees, and pause at last, wet, panting breathlessly, laughing, and look into each other’s flushed faces. ‘ X knew I could beat you, Sir Arthur, is the first thing Lady Cecil says, as well as she can for her throbbing heart beats. ‘ Oh what a race ! And my poor parasol, and my lovely hat—spoiled ! I can’t see anything to laugh at, Sir Arthur—it was a beauty, though you mayn’t have had soul enough to appreciate it. And my slippers —see!’ .

She held out one slim foot—oh, Queenie, was it coquetry ?—and the beautiful bronze slippers, the gay little rosettes, were ruined. ‘ And your feet are wet,’ Sir Arthur exclaimed ; ‘ that is worst of all. And there is danger under these trees, in this lightning. We must make lor the house. What place is this ?’ ‘ I don’t know. A most dismal and gruesome place, at least. Good gracious ! what a flash ; and—oh, Heavens ! Sir Arthur, did you see that ?’ She gave a little scream and caught his arm.

He followed her eye to the front windows of the house—just in time to catch a glimpse of a woman’s face as she pulled some one hastily away from the panes. ‘ That woman ’ do you know her ? he asked-. But Lady Cecil stood like one struck dumb, gazing with all her eyes. *Do you know her?’ he repeated in surprise. ‘ It is—ifc is —it is - Miss Ilerncastle !’ ‘Well, and who is Miss Herncasble? Does she live here ?’ * Live here ?’ She looked at him. ‘lt is Ginevra’s governess. And that other face—that awful, gibbering, mouthing face she drew away. Ugh !’ she shuddered and drew closer to him. * You did not look in time to see it, but—of all the woful, unearthly faces—and then Miss Herncastle came and dragged it away. Now what in the wide world brings her here ?’ * Suppose we go up to the house and investigate. Are you aware that j'ou are growing wetter every instant? Now, Lady Cecil, another race.’ They fled through the rain—coming down in bucketfuls by this time to the house, and into the low stone porch. Crash went Sir Arthur’s thunder on the panels. The door yielded to that tremendous knock and flew , open, and they stood face to face with a ball, gaunt, grin old woman. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ the baronet [ said ; ‘ I didn’t mean to force an entrance in this way. We gob caught in the storm, and fled here for shelter. Will you permit this lady to enter ?’ ‘ As you’ve bust the door open a’ready, I suppose I may,’ retorted the old woman, in no very hospitable tone, and casting no very hospitable glance on the two intruders. ‘Come in if .you like, and sit down.’

She pointed to a couple of wooden chairs, then went out of the room, and upstairs. And then there came from down those stairs a long, low, wailing cry, so wild, so unearthly, so full of infinite misery, that Lady Cecil, with a second .cry of alarm, caught hold of the baronet’s arm and looked at him with terrified eyes.

‘Did you hear that?’ she gasped. Yes, Sir Arthur had heard it —rather discomposed himself. He held hei hand and listened. Would that weird cry be renewed ? No; a heavy door slammed above, then perfect silence fell. ‘ Let us leave this horrid house and that harsh-looking old woman,’ exclaimed Lady Cecil. ‘ 1 believe the place, whatever else it may be, is uncanny. Of two evils I prefer the rain.’ ‘ The rain is by no means the lesser evil of the two. I fear I must bo arbitrary, my dear Lady Cecil, and insist upon your remaining at least ten minutes longer. By that time the lightning and rain will have ceased. That was a strange cry—it sounded like one in great pain.’ The door re-opened and the old woman re entered. She glanced suspiciously at the lady and gentleman seated by the window.

‘ I hope my raven didn’t frighten the young lady,’she said; ‘he do scream out most unearthly. That was him you heard just now.’ Sbe looked at them again, as though to see whether this statement was too much for their credulity. ‘lt did startle us a little, 1 confess. Your raven has a most lugubrious voice, my good woman. Will you tell us the name of t his place ?’ ‘ It be Bracken Hollow.’ ‘ Bracken Hollow, Lady Cecil repeated the name in a still more startled voice. She bad her wish, then, sooner than she had expected—she was in Sir Peter’s haunted house.

‘Ay, your ladyship, Bracken Hollow, a main and lonesome place —main and lonesome. Ye will have heard of it, maybe. Ye’re from the Park beyond now, I’ll lay ?’ ‘Yes, we’re from the Park. Do you live here in this lonely placo quite by . yourself ?’

‘Not quite, your ladyship; alone most of the time, but odd days a young woman from the town comes to help me redd up. Ye will hev seen her, mayhap, at the upper window as ye came in ? Again she looked searehinglv, anxiously, it seemed to the baronet. Ho hastened kindly to reassure her.

‘We did catch a glimpse of a face for a second at one of the upper windows. I suppose you are rarely intruded upon here as we intruded upon "you just now ?’ ‘ Ay, rarely, rarely. I mind once ’ —she rocked herself to and fro and looked dreamily before her—' I mind just once afore a young couple got kotched in the rain as ye did, and came here for shelter. That was six years ago—six long years ago —and there’s been many sad and heavy changes since then. He was rare an' handsome that day, and she—oh, it's a queer world —a queer world.’ ‘Lady Cecil, .the rain has ceased—T think we may venture forth now. Goodday to you, madam, and thanks for the shelter your roof has afforded.’ , Ho laid a sovereign in her skinny hand. She arose, dropped him a curtsey, and watched him out of sight. , t ‘A fine gentleman and free with' his money, and she—ah, it’s a beautiful-face, and it’s a proud face, but there’s, always trouble in .store for’.them as carries their heads so high, and them haughtyeyes always sheds most tears. A fine gentleman and a beautiful lady, but there’s trouble in store for them—trouble, trouble.’ ; v l"'j j ( To he Continued.)

Professional Beat (bo hotel proprietor) —ls there any danger of- fire here ?., Proprietor—Not if you settle for your board in advance. "