For Her Sister's Sake; OR, THE LAVENDEN SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8330, 11 January 1907, Page 2

For Her Sister's Sake; OR, THE LAVENDEN SECRET.

: CHAPTER VlL—Continued. "Did I?" faltered Winnie. She failed to recognise her own voice as it uttered the question —it sounded so strained and broken. Agnew's eyes became soft; there had been a sob in the tremulous query, a sob that fell appealingly upon his masculine ear. He forgot as he heard it that he was an ambitious young lawyer, with a parliamentary reputation, a rising politician, and a cabinet minister. All these things he forgot, and remembered only that he was a man and that Winifred Lavenden had found the way to his heart. He took her hand again. "Winnie," he said, "when learned you in here this morning I made a discovery—l learned what it was for me to hold you in my arms. I wonder if you would be very angry if you knew that I could not be altogether sorry that chance had given me the opportunity Her hand lay unresistingly in his; he put it to his lips—the touch of them thrilled Winifred Lavenden from head to foot. But she felt as if bound by some spell. Edward » Agnew bent low over her. "Winnie," he added huskily "you have been my little friend; I want you to be something more —I want you to be my wife." A sharp cry burst from Winifred Lavenden, and she snatched her hand away. Once more she was in the grasp of a waking nightmare, once more there arose before her a vision of the fatal flat in Grammont Mansion ; she saw its gleaming electric lights, its luxurious bachelor furniture,, and—in that inner room—the silent, rigid form of James Garth alias Garside. That was the secret that stood,, and must stand between her and her lover. «

"Oh, no, no!" she said desperately. "I couldn't, I mustn't!" Agnew winced and his face set. Winnie covered her own; she would not endure the look in his. v "Forgive me," she gasped, "oh! forgive me. I 'shall never marry any one—never. Don't hate me please; I couldn't bear that — from you." The lawyer's keen brown features had grown hard. But they softened at her piteous pleading. "I don't understand," he replied, gravely. "Perhaps I have been too impatient, perhaps I have asked you too soon, I will wait for your answer as long as you choose. Even if you can give me no hope, I will wait. But don't—don't break my dream of happiness—unless—unless you must —unless you love someone else."

He paused an instant; the idea had dealt him a blow that threatened'his self-control.

"Men like myself," he said, "do not love lightly or easily, and when we do it is a matter of life and death to us. I love you, Winnie; love you for your courage, your sincerity, your proud simplicity. You are not like the other women in society; yours is a brave little spirit walking a lonely path. I want you to walk through life with me, Winnie, and you shall not send me away for nothing."

Winnie dared not look up. Her heart was wrung with passionate impulse to tell him all. But the chains of silence that circumstances had woven so cunningly about her were chains of steel. She knew that she could not, she ought not to speak. Agnew ' stooped, seeking to see her face. He was quivering with all the despairing tenderness of a man who is fighting for the love of a lifetime.

"Tell me," he said—and there was a ring of command in his tone —"do you love some one else?" Winifred Lavenden shook her head. She could not lie to him. Agnew heaved a great sigh.

"Thank Heaven for that!" he exclaimed. Winnie made a protesting gesture.' "Oh! don't feel like that," she said; "I mustnt't let you feel like that. I—l could never be your wife, indeed, I couldn't." Edward Agnew took both her hands in his, and his clasp was strong and warm.

"Why?" he asked. Winnie drew her hands away. "I cannot tell you," she answered. The young lawyer bent upon her a tender, searching gaze. Winnie shrank from it.

"Don't, don't!" she begged. "You are killing me! J. don't love any one else, I never have loved any one else. I never shall —oh! no; I mustn't say that " She strove to release her hands again, for he had clasped them again and her with them. "You love me," he told her, with a man's fierce rapture at the first glimpse of certainty; "you love me, Winnie, and that shall join us beyond all parting." Winne released herself with an effort. Something touched a note of stern womanhood in her, and she faced her lover. Agnew felt a strange chill of alarm as he saw her set white face and the quiet despair in the gray eyes. "You are wrong," she said. "Fate has parted us. I can never be your wife—never." Agnew would have spoken, but the door of the drawing-room was opened Winnie sank back among her cushions; the newcomer was Constance Istria. "Ah! Agnew," she observed," sweeping into the apartment her trailing gown, "so you are interviewing our invalid." Edward Agnew mastered his beating pulse. •"I came rather to ask after Miss Lavenden than to trouble her with a visit," he replied; "and , indeed, am already due at the House: My anxiety about Miss Lavenden must

By R. Gorman Silver, ; . ', if "J Double Mask,'-' "A Daughter of Mystery t " "Held Apart," "The Golden Dwarf," eic.

["For Her Sister's Sake " was commenced on December 20th.]

be my excuse for so brief a call." Constance Istria bit her lip. It had not escaped her that she had intruded at an inopportune moment. "He is getting more infatuated with her than ever," she said to herself. But she received the apologies and adieus of the young lawyer with unruffled ease. His bearing, cool and self-pos-sessed, Agnew passed round the couch to shake hands with Winnie. No one could have guessed, as he lingered an instant beside her, at what a tragic juncture their conversation had been terminated. But momentarily as he paused,he had shot a whisper that could not possibly have reached any other ear than that of Winifred Lavenden. "You are breaking two hearts," he said — yours and mine. I must kr.ow why." And he was gone without another word. Constance Istria, left alone with her cousin, made no further reference to him. But a few minutes later she, too, passed from the room, and ascended the broad staircase. As she entered her own boudoir, her long skirts swept against an occasional table, and upset a tiny, but costly, vase that stood upon it. The mishap was trifling, yet it served as the match to the stored-up gunpowder of her rage. Picking up the vase, she hurled it into the fireplace, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Her feeling thus relieved, Constance Istria laughed viciously. i "What a charm is there in in- J nocence!" she exclaimed. "Oh! •Agnew, my friend, you are bewitched by those gray eyes. But I will break the spell, somehow —somehow!" ! She stopped; a light footfall hadj' sounded in the room. Coustance, Istria faced about. Behind her wasj Cecil e, the Frenchwoman, whom shef! had chosen as Julia Lavenden' s\\ maid. * j "Well," she said haughtily, "what; do you want?" | The Frenchwoman came a closer, one hand in the pocket off her black stuff gown—the other by| her side. ] "Please, my lady," she responded. "I thought you should know. Lady Lavenden last night—she had a headache, my lady, after dinner " "That is no news," retorted the other, pushing on to the hearth with a dainty satin shoe a fragment of the shattered vase that had rebounded upon the rug. "Also," said Cecile, imperturbably, "she had a visitor, very late, after she had lain down with the headache. The, visitor was a nurse, my lady, in a long blue cloak with gray facings on it. She insisted on seeing Lady Lavenden alone. From Devonshire, I was to say, my lady. My mistress seemed very agitated, and said I was to show up the person." "Well?" queried Constance Istria. . Cecile shrugged her shoulders. "Before I was dismissed from the room," she pursued, "I heard the nurse, say, 'I bring a message from the dead.' A while after my lady rang, and I showed the nurse out, a very big woman, my lady, most silent and discreet. Oh! yes, most discreet, and all wrapped about the mouth and throat, with a blue shawl, so that one saw but little of her face. And when I got back, my lady, my mistress was weeping. She must have wept all night, my lady, for the pillow was wet this morning." Constance Istria's brows contracted. She was thinking. "Anything else?" she demanded. "No, my lady," was the answer. ' "Very well," said Constance Istria —and. the Frenchwoman turned and went demurely out of the room. Constance Istria was moving the pieces of porcelain to and fro with the toe of her satin shoe. She might almost have been trying to solve a chess problem.

CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH A CHILD SLEEPS. . "Let my bill be got ready, waiter; I am going out of town for a few hours, and may not come back tonight." The speaker was David Garth. He sat at one of the tables in the great dining-room to the Manchester Hotel, that huge commercial stopping-place which looms up darkly in Aldersgate Street, and, open day and night, the year round, is usually thronged by a crowd of busy, and, for the most part, reserved mercantile folk. Outside the tall windows the eternal procession of the London traffic went by in the wind, and the rain of the March evening, and a million lights twinkled through the rain.

"Yes sir," said the waiter gravely, setting down a coffee-cup at the diner's elbow, and he went away upon the indicated errand. [To be Continued.]