THE LADY IN BLACK.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8404, 19 April 1907, Page 2

THE LADY IN BLACK.

By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of "An Infamous Fraud," %t A Terrible Family "For Love of Jack," "The, House on the Marsh,*' etc., etr.

CHAPTER I.—Continued. "You don't say so!" "You shall judge for yourself. In the first place, although she calls j herself Mrs Dale, the initials on some of her linen are 'D. M.' Now, M. does not stand for 'Dale,' does it?" "Perhaps her maiden name began with M.," suggested Mrs Rose. "My informant tells me," went on Mrs Bonnington, as if offended by the interruption, "that in her old books, school-books, and work of that sort, there is written the name 'Dorothy Leatham.' So that she seems to have passed already by three different names. I leave it to your own common sense whether that is not a curious circumstance, considering that she is still young." "It is certainly curious, very curious. And—and " Mrs Rose hardly liked to ask on what authority her visitor made these statements, which savoured strongly of the back stairs. She had hardly paused an instant before Mrs Bonnington rushed into further details: "And now there is another thing which is very strange: Her servants have none of them been with her long. They were all engaged together, three months ago in London, not by Mrs Dale herself, but by an old lady whose name nobody seems to know. Now isn't that . rather remarkable? They all came down here, and had the place ready for their mistress, before they so much as saw her." Mrs Bonnington leaned back in her chair, and drew on her brown cotton gloves farther. Mrs Rose wondered again as to the source of this information. She felt a little ashamed of listening to all this gossip, and was less inclined than her friend to take a suspicious view of the case, strange though it was. So she contented herself with murmured interjections, to fill up the pause before Mrs Bonnington went on again: "However, I have a clue to where she came from, for a van-load of furniture came down before she arrived, it came from Todcaster." "Todcaster!" echoed Mrs Rose. "Then we shall soon know something more aboat her. Mr Rose's old Mrs Haybrow, is coming down to see us early next month. She lived near Todcaster when she was a girl, and she often goes back to the old place, and keeps in touch with all the people about there." "Well," said Mrs Bonnington. rising from her chair, and speaking in •a rather more stilted tone than at first, with the consciousness that her news had hardly been received as she had expected. "I sincerely trust we may find we have been mistaken. No one will rejoice more unfeignedly than I if she proves to be, indeed, what she gives herself out to be. Indeed, if N ehe had received me frankly at the outset, I would have ■shown her such Christian sympathy as one soul can give to another, without asking any questions. And it is only in the interests of our young people that J lift up my voice now." The vicar's wife then took her leave, and went on her way to complete her morning rounds. She was rather a terrible person, this little, faded, middle-aged woman, with the curate' 3 voice and the curate's manner, uniting, as she did, a desperate interest in other people's affairs with a profound conviction that her interference in them could only be for good. But she had her good points. A devoted, submissive, and worshipful wife, she modified her worship by considering herself the vicar's guardian angel. A parish busybody and tyrant, she never spared herself, and could show true womanly kindness to such of her husband's parishioners as were not of "a forward spirit." Unluckily, she had not the power of conciliating, but had, on the contrary, a grand talent for raising up antagonism in unregenerate minds like those of the unfortunate Mabin. The young girl had been very sorry and ashamed, at her own loss of temper. Not that an outburst such as that she had indulged in was any unusual thing. Like many young girls of spirit under injudicious rule, Mabin was in a state of perpetual friction with those around her. Her stepmother was not intentionally unkind ; but poor Mabin had to suffer from the constant comparison of her unruly and independent self with her quiet and insipid half-sisters. And the worst of it was that her father was even less indulgent than his wife to her waywardness, a stiff, straight-laced, narrow-minded man, accustomed to be looked up to and deferred to by the female members of his household, he disapproved in the strongest manner both of the erratic moods of his eldest daughter, and of her longing for independence. It was from him indeed, that Mabin chiefly suffered. . She looked upon the cool, handsome, aquiline face of her father with something very much like horror, and the mere fact that he approved only of submissive womanly women seemed to gojjd her into the very rebelliousness and independence which shocked him so deeply. At the same time that he disapproved of her, however, Mr Rose did not hesitate to avail himself of his daughter's bright wits; and if any task requiring a little thought or a little judgment presented itself, it was always upon Mabin's shoulders that he put the burden. He had even gone so far, protesting loudly the while against the "unfeminine" practise, as to allow Mabin to ride a bicycle; and it was on his machine that the girl was expec- j ted to go to Seagate two or three times a week, to fetch him his books and magazines from the local library. As Mrs Bonnington descended the steps of the big stone house, and, emerging from the portico, made her way down the broad gravel path

to t.hrt j*ate, she met Mabin coming out by the side gate 1 among the evergreens, with her bicycle by her side. Now. if there was one thing more detestable in the eyes of the vicar's wife than another, it was a bicycle. But this detestation increased tenfold when the rider of the obnoxious machine was a woman. It was her one grievance against upright Mr Rose that he allowed his ninetoei:-year-old daughter to "career about the country" on the abominable thing. She uttered an involuntary "Ugh!" of disgust as the thing almost touched her uplifted skirts. "I beg your pardon. I hope I didn't run against you. lam so clumsy," said Mabin, with studied politeness. "You can't expect to be anything but clumsy while you use such a thing as that!" said Mrs Bennington severely. "I wish for your own sake it would get broken, that you might never be seen in aii attitude so unbecoming to a gentlewoman again,." "Is it you who tell your sons to throw stones at it when I am rising past the vicarage?" said Mabin, trying to speak civilly, while the blood rose to her cheeks. "Walter struck the hind wheel two days ago, and now I have to walk as long as I am within stone's-throw of your garden wall." "I have heard nothing about it," said Mrs Bonnington icily. "Of. course you wouldn't," said Mabin, keeping her tone in check. "But i see Ruuolph has taken to riding one, too, since he's been back. So, if they throw stones at me, I can have my revenge upon him," she concluded threateningly. "If girls unsex themselves, they can't expect to be treated with the chivalry they used to receive, said Mrs Bonnington, as, not caring to continue the encounter with the rebellious one, she turned her back, and went down the hill. CHAPTER 11. A PENITENT. Mabin looked at Mrs Bonnington's retreating figure, half-regretfully and half-resentfully. The regret was for her own incivility; the resentment was for the want of tact which had provoked it. Mabin, like so many other young girls on the threshold of womanhood, lived in a constant state of warfare both with v herself and her neighbours. Sensitive, affectionate, hasty tempered, and wilful, she was at the same time almost morbidly modest and distrustful of herself, so that she 'passed her time in alternate bursts of angry resentment against those who misunderstood her, and fits of remorse for her own shortcomings. She now mounted her bicycle with the feeling that the vicar's wife had spoiled her morning's ride for her. Not by any means a vain girl, she underrated her own attractions, which included a pretty, gray-eyed little flower-face, a fair skin, and short, soft, dark-brown hair. But she was keenly alive to the reproach of clumsiness, which had so often been cast at her. She had shot up, within the last three years, to a height which, together with the girlish leanness of her figure, had caused her to be called, even outside the family circle, "a lamp-post," and a "gawky creature." And although she stubbornly »refused to take to the longskirts which would have lent her the grace she wanted, she nourished a smoldering indignation against her traducers. And chief among these were the boys of the vicarage, against whom, as against their mother for her.criticisms and their father for his dull sermons, her spirit was always in arms. The strife between the Bonningtons and the Roses had not always been so keen. Indeed, in the old days when they were children together, Mabin and Rudolph had got on well enough together, and had exchanged lovetokens of ends of slate-pencil, lumps of chalk, and birds' eggs. But with advancing years had come first coolness and then estrangement. So that it was now the correct thing among the Bonnington boys to laugh at Mabin for being "advanced," "superior," "a new woman," and a "fright,"; while she, on her side,: treated them with lofty contempt as "savages" and "boors." (To be Continued.)