THE LADY IN BLACK.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8411, 27 April 1907, Page 2

THE LADY IN BLACK.

By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of «Mw Infamous Fraud," %i A Terrible Famiit). "jFor Love of Jack,'' "The House. on the Ular*}!," etc., etc.

CHAPTER V.—Continued,

"Come and see if you like your room," said Mrs Dale, springing quickly toward the door, with a rapid change of manner. "I must tell you frankly I am afraid you won't, because this place has been constructed haphazard, without any regard to the comfort or convenience of the unfortunate people who have to live in it. Every fireplace ia so placed that the chimney must smoke whichever way the wind is, and every window is specially adapted to let in th;: rain, when there is any, and the wi.id when there isn't." Mrs Dale,* as she spoke, led the way from the dining-room, and Mabin followed. Mrs Dale certainly exaggerated the. defects of the house, but that it was inconvenient could not be denied. The side nearest to the road, where the dining-room was, had once been the whole house. It had a basement, and out of the warren of small rooms of which it had once ■consisted, a fairlylarge hall and a few fair-sized rooms had been made. The newer but not very new portion of the house had no basement, and it was by a short flight of steps that you ascended from the hall into the drawing-room, and by another' short flight that you ascended to the bedroom floor. Here the same irregularity was apparent. A corridor ran through the house from end to end on this floor, broken where the new part joined the old by half a dozen steep steps. It was to a bedroom on the higher level at the old end of the house that Mrs Dale conducted Mabin. "Why, it's a lovely room!" cried the girl, surprised to find herself in a big, low-ceilinged, corner room lighted by three windows, and looking out on one side to the road, with a view of fields and sea beyond, and on the other to the garden at the back of the house, whtfre apple trees and gooseberry bushes and the homely potato occupied the chief space, while the nooks were filled with the fragrant flowers of cottage gardens, with sweet william and sweet pea, mignonette, and wallflower. "Do you really think so? I'm so glad. I went over to Seagate the other day and got some cretonne for the curtains and the v easy chair. The old chintz there was in the room, would have given you the nightmare." Mabin had not recovered from her first impression of astonishment and admiration. The dingy diningroom, with its mahogany and horse • hair, had not prepared her for this. A beautiful rug lay in front of the fireplace, which was filled with a fresh gi;een fern. "This will be put in the corridor •outside at night," Mrs Dale was careful to explain. The hangings of the little brass bedstead were of cretonne, with a pattern of gray-green birds and white flowers on a pale pink ground; these hangings .were trimmed with lace of ■deep cream tint. The rest of the furniture was enameled white, with the exception of a dainty Japanese writing-table in one window and a low wicker armchair in another. But it was not so much in these things as in the care arid taste with which all the accessories had been chosen, the silver candlesticks and tray on the dressing-table, the little Sevres suit on the mantel, that a lavish ahd luxurious hand was betrayed. Mabin's delighted admiration made Mrs Dale smile, and then suddenly burst into tears. "Don't look at me, don't trouble your head about me, child," she cried, as she turned away her head to wipe her eyes. "It was my vanity, the vanity 1 can't get rid of, that made me want to show you I know how to make things appear pretty and nice. I made the excuse to myself that it was to please you, but really I know it was to please myself." "But why shouldn't you please yourself, and have pretty things about you?"' asked Mabin, in sur-j prise. "Is there any harm in having nice things, if one has the money to buy them and j,the taste to choose them? I suppose it helps to .keep the people who make them." "That is what I used to say to ■myself, deaf," said Mrs Dale, with ■a sigh. "But now I don't buy pretty things any more—for— for a reason." And again a look of • deep pain swept across her face. But at Mabin's interested look she shoo'c ~her;head. "No, no," in ,a frightened whisper, "I wouldn't tell you why for all thp world!" "But you wear pretty clothes! Or is it only that you look pretty in them?" suggested Mabin, blushing with the fear that she wasjblundering again. .Mrs Dale shook her fhead, smiling slightly: "I have my dresses made to fit me, that's all," she said simply. "And as for these," she touched the flashing rings on her fingers, "I wear them because I'm obliged to." Which was all sufficiently puzzling to the young girl, who, having washed her hands, was drying them , on a towel so fine that this use sacmed to her a sacrilege. She refrained from further remark, (however, upon the luxury in which she found "herself installed, and as the luncheon-bell rang at that moment, the two ladies went downstairs together. But after the beautiful appoint- • ments of her room, Mabin was struck by the contrast afforded by the rest of the , house, which was furnished in the usual manner, with ' worn carpeting in the corridor and ■ on the stairs, and with cheap lamps ' on brackets, and tables in the hall • and passages. At luncheon Mrs Dale was again S in high spirits. She chattered away V brightly for the amusement of her

young companion, who, entirely unto so much attention, was happier than she ever remembered to have been in her life before. Mrs Dale did not spare the eccentricities in walk and dress of the ladies in the neighbourhood ar r more than they had spared hers. "I don't know how you can ever be dull when such funny things come into your head!" cried simple Mabin, wiping her eyes over a hearty fit of laughing. Mrs Dale grew suddenly grave again. "Ah, nothing is amusing when one is by oneself or when one has—thoughts!" she ended in a low voice, with a different word from the one ! which had been in her mind. " And now let me show you my den. No, it is not a boudoir; it is nothing but a den. Come and see." She opened a door which led from the dining-room into a small room, even more bare, more sombre than the other. It has evidently once served the purpose of a library or study, for there was a heavy old bookcase in one corner and a row of empty book-shelves in another. And there was the usual horsehair sofa. By the one window, however, there was a low and comfortable, though shabby, wicker chair. "I hava had this other door fastened up and the cracks filled in," said Mrs Dale, shnvinga c'oo: of posits to the o.ie by which they had mtered. "It goesdewn by a flight of breakneck stairs into the drawing-room, a loat'isome dungeon into which I nev r penetrate. The draft used to te strong enough to blow me away. So I thought," she went on with curious | wistfulness, "I might just have that done." ! Again Mabin wondsred at the peni- I tential tone; again she glanced up. But Mrs Dale recovered herself more quickly this time, and, putting the girl gently into the wicker chair, while she curled herself up on the horsehair couch, she drew Mabin out and encouraged the girl by sympathetic questions, and by still more sympathetic listening, to lay bare some of the recesses of her young heart. The afternoon passed quickly; and when Mrs Dale, springing suddenly off the sofa after a silence, ran away into the diningroom to ask about certain dainties which she had ordered from town benefit, but which had failed to arrive that morning, the girl was left in a state of happy excitement, thinking what a picture the little goldenhaired creature had made as she sat curled up on the sofa, and wonderinghow she could have been so ungrateful as to imagine she could be anything but happy under the same roof with Mrs Dale. Mabin looked idly out of the window, and craned her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of the sea. But this was the north side of the house, and the sea was on the south-west; so she failed. But as she looked out she saw a cab drive slowly, up the road, and was surprised to find that the solitary occupant, an elderly lady with gray hair and a hard, forbidding face, stared at her fixedly through a pair of goldrimmed eye glasses, as if she felt some personal interest in her. Mabin felt herself blush, for she was sure she had never seen the lady|before. Just as she drew her head in she heard the cab stop at the front gate. Mrs Dale's voice, talking brightly to the parlormiaid, came to Mabin's ears through the door, which had been left ajar. Then she heard a knock at the front door, and the parlor maid went to answer it. "Mabin, come here," cried Mrs Dale from the next room. '"I want to show you " The "words died on her lips, and Mabin, who was in the act of coming into the dining room in obedience, to her call, stopped short, and, after a moment's consideration, of what [she ought to 4 'do, retreated into the smaller room and shut the door behind her. But she had been in time to witness a strange meeting. For the elderly lady whom she had seen in the cab had appeared at |the outer door of the dining room as she had shown herself at the inner one, and it was at the sight of her that Mrs Dale had stopped short in her speech, with a look of abhorrence and terror on her face. The elder lady spoke at once in a harsh, commanding voice. She ( was very tall, erect, and {stately, handsomely dressed in black, altogether a j commanding personality. Her voice j rang through the room and reached Mabin's ears, striking the girl with terror, too. (To be Continued.)