Literature.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 72, 29 March 1904, Page 4

Literature.

"THE ENIGMA." (Continued.) •'Y,ou !" she said, looking up at him quickly. There was no surprise in her voice. It seemed quite natural that he should be (here. " "Yes," replied Lord Bradacre. "I want to have just a word or two with you—lor the sake of old times. May I be seated ?" She bowed in silence, but her eyes were cold, and she could not trust herself to speak. "To meet after all these years !" lie said ; and there was a lire in his eyes, a passion in his voice, that the world rarely saw or heard. "I daresay you were surprised,' 1 she said. "1 did not know that you were in England ; certainly not that you were to be one of Lady Plumton's party, or I should not nave come. It—it wus a shock."

"To you as well as to me?" lie asked the question almost eagerly. "Meeting old friends unexpectedly has always something dramatic In it," she answered, with a slow smile.

''And we were something more than friends." "Were wo ? All I remember was that onco I hated you—hated you so fiercely that I could have killed you." She spoke in a bitter whisper. There was a smouldering Are in her dark eyes, but it was gone in a moment, and she gave a little laugh, half-mirthful, half mocking. "Why should you have hated me ?" he questioned, in a low-pitched voice.

" What need to ask ? Y'ou know well enough. Because you were a villain, Lord Bradacre, who stooped to dazzle a poor, ignorant girl with your courtly speech, your wealth of knowledge, your unscrupulous arts of fascination. What a poor little fool I was ! And yet what wonder that I should have believed in you, loved you. I wus only a child. Fancy ! a month or two over sixteen—ah, you might have left me alone in my perfect innocence ; it was no triumph to be proud of. I thought you something greater than a man, scarcely lees than a god ; and I loved you. You could do no wrong. How was it possible for me to read your mind. I was so young, so ignorant. It fs such an old story, so old and yet so new that it is played every day in real life by real men and women. It has become hackneyed, ceased to be tragedy, and affords a subject for burlesque. The profligate nobleman and the trusting village maiden. It drives me mad sometimes to think of It."

"I was a villain, I acknowledge it now," he said, a little brokenly. "But I loved you, Agnes, and no other woman has ever meant what you did to me. But what was Ito do ? It was a case of noblesse oblige. I had other duties to fulfil—duties that I owed to my birth my position. I could not disregard them And I never thought that you would take it to heart so sadly as you must have done ; ana I did mean to see you again as I promised. But I was sent abroad by my father on an errand which seemed genuine enough tL.th, ' bUt Which ' * since thought was invented for the purpose. ' H

But you left me." she said, doggedly. ■'Explanations are easy, and of course .t doesn't matter now If I were disposed to tell you all that I went through, all that I suffered t would merely try your patience and not exoite your pity. You are in an you r wi l n , n a , i, , " ood ' L ° rd "-daore you will allow me to say so without rudeness. You ar* mellow, W«3ly. a little remorseful for past er-rors-wo will Ilot ca „ J J " people ,n your position are a lowed snch licenses, and women in mrne are fair sport (that Is your commit yourself are hard i„LTV aenj-hard as gran it"' - '" I,rßdverv°crue»v e D ' y "And what wau i <>u „i «way that expression „, 7 chasl "g How wonilerfu? thi« "' ar " aze »"- , »t. How sho h^changedT 1 " 0 ." "??.' splendid buttorflv f«,i' . , U,is rich colours ,' garbod ,n a " the g«nius! Z little b 'T d ' >oaut - v °«" the lovely known, «*orn he had lovS i' Wh ° m " e ~a<l -"Ch LCness"'!? 01 hr - «»««. 'n:e' m^™ t n o «.aftera -the usual mai™Zn; f J '° U soc -b"» I might havelln conv ™'«nce even happy had C °" U '" t an " «ut there is n ' o %™ b f" a child, are all the dignm'' V'^" 08 - VV,,at »ave won, the t i& J honou ™ I '""ess I eon hj«^ e l L hav f lnh^l«l. niedme." glft has »<*)n deK l ttritw' t<!, ' mso ' d^td. -tionhadUn S na , ( r, <OWl,o,lla '»- And now asTe t,« at !' °flife-gi-t that the wor,d had Sa ' d ß h CVery "l>on him nm- showered sea fruit? ""° ffi ° re ""» dead

"But I do not wish to talk about myself, Agnes, but about you " he pursued, aftor a moment's sllense. "You have made good use of your years. I can hardly believe that you and the untaught girl that 1 knew are one and the same,"

"Oh, it was your reading to me which first gave mo the idea of becoming a reciter, I suppose. You remember the afternoon when you read me 'Romeo and Juliet' ? Ah, how it all comes back to me !" Her voice trailed oft into silence, but she quickly recovered herself. "Well it was you who opened to me roads of knowledge that had been closed to me until then. It was you who awoke my soul. I had to wait putiently for years before 1 could do anything that brought me in more than a pittance. My father turned me out of Mb house, for bringing shame upon him and myself. "I found employment after nearly starving-how the paragraph writers would like to know all this r It was something that sufficed to keep body and soul together. I was a sweated worker in the East End of London. Ah, how I worked. And all the Vimo I was educating mvself. training myself in this art which I f u lt I should one day excel in "

"And then, I suppose, Mr Congrove came along ?" "There was no Mr Congrevo t I asf tinned the name. I thought it sounded attractive. I happened to be reading Congrcve's comedies at thu *fme."

A long silence fell between them. Suddenly Lord Bradacre looked up. ' I don't, suppose you will believe me, Agnes ; but I wish from my soul that I had defied the wishes of my family and married you." "Y'ou soy that now," she answered, "because you see me as I am, not as I was, not as I might have become. You say that because I was strong and endured, and at last triumphed. But supposing you hud met me in the gutter? Fortunately, I escaped that. Hut would you then have wished you had married me?" 'Ah, you do well to reproach me," lie answered. "But whatever you have suffered, I tell you I have Buffered also." "Because you have no son, you mean ?" lie bowed his head in silence. Mrs Congrevo, veiling a kind of triumph that shone In her eyes, hunt down and unclasped a small locket that was concealed in tho bosom oilier black gown—a locket of a bov with laughing merry eyes, and merry boyish features. She handed it to Lord Bradacre. "Don't you wonder what kept me from sinking, whut made me t .„. dure, and determine to win fame to conquer fate, to make a something of the life you had ruined •)•• There was hatred, undisguised, almost brutal, in her voice now I| o looked at the boy's face and then at hers, in wonderment. "I don't understand." "Oh, it i« quite simple,'' she said. ■ It was the thought of my child—my Bon."-

"Your son I" Bit eyes took in hungrily that fair aspect of boyhood at its beat, He gave a low cry and handed her the portrait back. "Your son—and mine," he muttered.

" Your's !"■ she said almost snatch, ing it from him with ;a sudden burst of passionate anger. "How dare you make claim to him ! lie has never missed his father. I have been both father and mother to him. lie loves me ; you are a stranger to him."

"If it were revenge you wanted, you have it in full," he answered. "Yes, Lord Bradacre, If * wive waited all these years for revenge, I hav« it now."

She had risen to her feet, and wus looking down at him with her strange enigmatical eyes. Wut could he have seen, there was only pity and nothing of triumph in their depths. Pity for this childless man and for her fatherless boy, and a little for herself. A movement made Lord Bradacre fiance up. lie tons alone. Mrs Congruve hud returned to the ilruwinproom. (The end.)