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

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8332, 15 January 1907, Page 2

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

CHAPTER IX.—Continued. He was watching her admiringly. It is no exceptional thing for sisters of the London nursing missions to be ladies, and May Anderson was plainly a daughter of . the West End. But she was something more than a well-bred girl. Her brown eyes had a light in them like unwept tears, and a little tremulous smile came and went about her shy, grave mouth. May—otherwise May Anderson—was not only pretty, she was sunshiny, the limpid sunshine of an April day. And there was need in the parish of St. Barnabus for both sunshine and tears sunshine for its, clouded lives, tears for its sorrowing ones. "You are tired, Mr Ingram,'" she said, putting down the poker. The Reverend Charles Ingram shook his head. •"Not very,", he responded. "It has'been rather a lazy day with me. I fear I tire very easily; so many people* tell me I look weary. I try not to." .Sister May looked down at the worn carpet. "You work too hard," she answered, and there was a suspicious quiver in her voice. "Not I," said the curate brightly; "but why talk about so uninteresting a subject as myself? What can I have the pleasure of doing for you?" The nurse repressed a sigh. "There . are some coal orders to countersign," she replied, and drew a bundle of papers from under her cloak. Charles Ingram took up a pen and began to sign the sheets she laid before him. • "The weather does keep uncertain," he observed., "I envy you your splendid health. You seem to thrive upon rain and wind, like some beautiful hardy blossom." His gaze lingered upon her as he returned her the papers. May Anderson coloured. "I have been hurrying," she explained. "I didn't know Sister Eva was back until I saw her in the street just now. I ran after her, but missed her, somehow." The curate raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Sister Eva back!" he said. "Surely not. I only heard from her three days ago, and she wrote that she intended staying on until the end of the week. Are you certain it was she?" "Quite," was the decisive answer. May Anderson was nothing if no decisive. "She was wearing a shawl I knitted for her—that pale blue thing. And, by the way, she had it up about her ears. I should say she doesn't feel much better, poor girl." "It is hard to come back [to London in this weather," commented Charles Ingram sympathetically; "the winters in Devonshire are often almost balmy." There was a knock at the door. It flew open, and Matilda Crimple entered with a tray. She hastened to transfer from it to the table the teapot, some toast and some fried fish, then went out again, after a sly look at Charles Ingram and his visitor. May Anderson poured out the curate's tea. "Won't you have a cup?" he asked her. "Let me ring for one," She checked him as he turned toward the bell, "I musn't," she said."l have a round of visits to pay to-night, some of them bad cases." And she held out her hand. "The worst of them will feel better when you have* called," declared Charles Ingram, clasping the warm, soft fingers. "Even I shall enjoy this cup of tea all the more because you have poured it out for me." "Sister May" coloured again. "A compliment from you!" she exclaimed, trying to laugh. She drew her hand away very gently; he had been holcjing it absent-mindedly. "Good night, Mr Ingram," she said. "Do take better care of yourself, won't you?" The curate's face becme grave. "My life is not my own," he answered. The nurse's lip trembled but she said nothing., as he held the light for her to descend the stairs. She glanced back at him, however, and a lump came into her throat as she . thought how thin and worn was the , resolutely cheerful face on which the lamplight shone.. He listened, and heard the door * close below before re-entering his room and sitting down to his supper. He ate abstractedly, in silence, for awhile, sipping at the cup of tea that Sister May had poured out for him. Matilda had brought him up an evening paper; he noticed it at last, opened it out, and laid it in front of him, looking at the late news. In the.space reserved for important news, there was a paragraph. It was blurred, but readable: "WEST END FLAT DEATH." "Police are searching for a hospital nurse reported to have been seen at the flat of the deceased late last ' night. She is said to have worn a blue cloak with gray facings, and was closely muffled in a pale blue woollen shawl." The curate read it idly. But his brows contracted, as if he were seeking to remember something. He scanned the paper, and found a set of ...longer .paragraphs under the heading: "Mystery of a London Flat." They detailed the discovery in Grammont Mansion, setting forth clearly and in detail, as is the habit of the newspaper reporter, the finding of James Garside, dead, by'his valet, the absence of the weapon, with whiph the act must have been committed, and other facts for and against the probability of suicide, the few particulars that had been gleaned about the dead man, and + he atmosphere of mystery that surrounded the

By R. Norman Silver, ;] < i of "A Double Mask," "A Daughter of Mystery,'' "Held Apart," "The Golden Duiarf," eie.

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

whole case. The Reverend Charles Ingram's eyes wandered to the first item, and he re-read the paragraph that they had first fallen upon. A nurse in blue and gray —it was the uniform of the nursing mission that cooperated with the St. Barnabas' clergy in the work of a lower class parish. But the muffled shawl— why was that familiar? Ha recollected suddenly. "That pale blue thing"— "A shawl I knitted for her." It was Sister May who had said that, and about Sister Eva, and Sister Eva whom they had thought to be in Devonshire —the Sister Eva whom May Anderson had seen unexpectedly in Clerkenwell. "A —a most curious coincidence," said Charles Ingram to himself. But his brows contracted again as he said it, and he found himself rereading the paragraph once more. His tea grew cold, but the minutes went by, and he was still reading, reading the paragraphs relating to the mystery of- Grammont Mansion. CHAPTER X. LOVE AND A MAN'S HEART. "Won't you let me share your thoughts?" Winifred Lavenden, walking her horse through the almost deserted Row in Hyde Park, looked round with a start. Edward Agnew had ridden up behind her, and, passing her attendant groom, had gained her side. " His glance met hers with a grave tenderness. The wind and_*rain of the night had given place to "a glorious springlike morning. London was spanned by a sky of blue", with lit! 1 .>, fleecy cloudlets in it, and yellow sunbeams sparkled on every crystal drop that the rain had left upon the greenery of the park. The few riders whom the beauty of the morning had tempted forth so early basked luxuriously in the sun. There were dark shadows under Winnie's eyes, but Jthe freshness of the day had brought a flush to her cheek. She sat her horse well, though the accomplishment was a new one to her, and her riding school lessons were but recently over. No one would have imagined, as the two horses passed onward together, that the lightly swaying figure in the black habjt had been, but six months before, bending over a sewing machine in an Islington by-street. But if Winifred Lavenden had the beauty of the . aristocrat, she had not the true aristocratic air of bored amusement or of cold hauteur. The lines of a strange and keen unhappiness made her face striking and piteous in its stern sorrow. Her gaze drooped as it encountered again that of the young lawyer. She remembered the words that had ended their last interview: "You are breaking two hearts, yours and mine. I must know .why." She braced herself to resist the quiet resolution she saw in his face. "My thoughts," she said gently, "make me unhappy. That is why I keep them to myself." Agnew answered with a protesting gesture. "Friendship halves most troubles," he declared. "Love does even better, for it. teaches us to .forget them. I am your friend, at least. Won't you tell me what is causing you such unhappiness?" Winnie's eyes were bent upon her saddle-bow, and upon the small, leather-gauntleted hands that were guiding her horse. "I—l can't," she falterqd. "Mr Agnew, I said more than I ought to have done yesterday. I shall despise myelf for it all my life. But I want you to forget it—l want you to forget me." The handsome brown features of the lawyer pa]ed, and his fingers contracted on the rains of the fine hunter he rode. "You told me," he said, you had never loved any one but me, thai; you never would love any one but me. I cannot forget that —ever." Winifred Lavenden reponded with tremulous determination. "You must," she declared steadily. "I told you the truth —that fate had parted us." "I am the best judge of that," said Agnew. "I must know what this barrier is."' He drew closer to her, and the two horses kept step. "When I look at you, Winnie," he went on, "and see your soul shining through your eyes, I do not believe that anything lies behind you or before you that need separate us. I may seem to be a very ordinary kind of man, and it is true that I am only a commonplace lawyer, and that still more commonplace thing—a member of Parliament. But, for all that, I know that there is something, in me that a woman might trust herself to, and not be disappointed. Will :you not deal frankly with me?" (To be Continued.)