WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 279, 22 May 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

WONDERFUL ROMANCE MILLIONAIRE LEAVES £6,000,000 TO A WORKING GIRL. Six millions just because she was beautiful ! Was there ever a more wonderful romance than this? Think of a poor girl who had been working all her life, never earning more than £1 a week. Suddenly she awakes to find that she is one of the richest heiresses in the world. It reads like a fairy tale, and it has all the wonders of one; but it is true, and it happened a few weeks ago. The girl is Uona Vardis. She is 20 years old, and until she became a great heiress she worked in a fancy goods shop in Budapest, the Hungarian city so famout throughout the world for the beauty of its women.

Ilona's parents were of the greafc masses, and nowhere are social distinctions more closely drawn than in AustriaHungary. So what good did it do her that she was tall, of graceful carriage, with a handsome face that compelled every man to look twice, and that she had rich dark hair and warm black eyes. The men who looked twice were of two kinds—those with whom a good gir\ could not associate, or those who would not think of marrying even a beauty unless she had a dowry. And so Bona had to toil twelve hours a day in the shop, and if she dreamed of the fairy prince who seemed beyond reach she did not allow it to interfere with her work. Though she earned only £1 a week, that is good pay for a shopgirl in Hungary, and her parents needed the money to help keep the pot boiling. The great event in Ilona's life which meant the change in the whole story of her life, came two years ago, when a rich old man, Jean K'ronyl, entered tile shop to buy some needles. ' Like many other men, he was fascinated by her beauty, and he came there again and again, each time buying something, as a pretext for his visit.

llona did not know he was rich, for lie wore paper cuffs and collars and a shabby coat. Tie was old, with deeply furrowed forehead and unkempt hair. Neither llona nor any other girl in the shop knew that he was Kronyl, the great millionaire, who owned vast quantities of real estate. Kronyl made discreet enquiries through detectives, and found that llona was as good as she was beautiful; and then began a remarkable quest. He travelled all over Hungary modestly. Quietly he poked around in obscure corners of Budapest, and he even went to Vienna. He had few friends, and they did not know the object of his journey, which did not leak out until after his death. The ■ object was to find the prettiest working girl in Austria-Hungary; for, having no near relatives of his own, he had then and there decided to find the fairest of all working girls and make her the heiress to his vast fortune. For two years he prosecuted his search, and then when he died he left a will bequeathing all that he possessed to the beautiful young shop-girl.

I And now she is the richest heiress in Europe; and if she has not been wooed by all the eligible men she soon will be eourted by most of them. Kronyl's reason, as given in his will, ) for his strange bequest, was that he wished to enable the prettiest shop-girl to marry whom ever she desired; for he said that it was unfair that she should be deprived of a suitable husband for lack of a dowry. MULATTO GIRL'S CONFESSION. KILLS 17 PEOPLE. !A remarkable story of fiendish crimes . committed under the mask of religion > is reported from Lafayette, Louisiana. I A half-blood negress, 1!) years of age, who I states that she is the high priestess of a J negro religious cult called "Church Sacj rifice, or the Sacred Serpent," has been ■ arrested for murder, and on being interj rogated by the police has confessed to ' killing no fewer than 17 people. During the past few months 37 men and women, all of the negro race, have been found murdered in the rice-belt of Louisiana and Eastern Texas. The woman's confession embraces a wealth of detail about human sacrifice and mysterious rites practised by the follower's of the savage cult of Hoodooism. In each case the instrument of death was an axe, and every one of the other 20 victims was murdered under the direction of the prisoner.

The case has created enormous excitement, for it had long been supposed that Hoodoo worship had been stamped out of the United States. The story is worthy to rank with Stevenson's story of the fair Cuban. THE KNITTED COAT. Apropos of the present craze for the knitted coat—or "golfer," as it is pularly known—a London correspondent, writing early in March, says: "Quite flO per cent of the women in London this winter have sport-knitted coats. They are comfortable and pretty, 'but the very latest eccentricity of fashion in this respect is an atrocity resembling a man's blazer, with stripes loud enough to drown any conversation. They are supposed to be specially adapted for seaside wear, though why you should make yourself more hideous at the seaside than anywhere else remains a mystery." THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. A pathetic, almost a tragic, anecdote is told of the Empress Eugenie by the Paris Journal, which those who have approached the former Empress of the French say is at least plausible. The aged lady, who is close on BG, while stopping at her beautiful villa at Cap Martin, received the visits of an Hungarian autograph-collector, who has specimens of the handwriting of all the crowned heads of Europe and their chief kinsmen. He came straight from Hungary to Cap Martin to beg the Empress Eugenie for her autograph. She refused to see him, and sent out by a servant this spoken message of three words, '"I am dead."