THE LADY IN BLACK.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8437, 8 May 1907, Page 2

THE LADY IN BLACK.

By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of "An Infamous Friend," -"A.TerriMe Famili;,' "For Love of,,fac t " -The House on the Meruit," etc., etc.

CHAPTER IX.—Continued. At last Mrs Dale asked, in a hoarse whisper: "That noise—l a noise in the house—and Annie, I saw Annie running up-stairs. What was it?" "The drawing-room window had been left open, and it banged against the shutter,'' replied Mabin. "I went down and shut it, and Annie went down, too." She was ashamsd to have to make this equivocal answer, but she dared not tell the whole truth—yet. She must have more of her friend's confidence first; she must know more. And again she asked herself, whether this man was some old lover of Mrs Dale's, who had been shut up on account of insanity, and of whose confinement Mrs Dale had heard. Mabin thought she would make an attempt to find out. "What a handsome face this is!" she said, controlling her own agitation as well as she could, and fixing her gaze upon the picture. "I don't think I ever saw a face I admired so much." There was a pause, and Mabin, without looking round, heard her companion draw a deep breath. Presently, however, the latter recovered her self-possession sufficiently to ask with an assumption of her usual playful tone: "Not even Rudolph's?" Mabin was taken completely off her guard. Her mind filled with the story of her friend, she had for the time forgotten her own. "Oh, that is a different type of face, quite different," she replied, relapsing at once into the formal tone of the shy schoolgirl. "But not without its good points?" suggested Mrs Dale, coming behind the girl and putting her little hands on her waist. Mabin, with an inspiration of astuteness, thought she perceived a short cut to her friend's confidence, a confidence which would clear the ground for further discoveries, further enlightenments. "Haven't you ever felt that oneperson—was putside everything else? And not to be measured by standards at all?".she asked in a soft, shy Vjice. Mrs Dale's answer, the answer' too of a widow, came upon her like a thunderbolt: "No, dear. I have had no such experience myself. I have never cared for a man in all my life." And she spoke with the accents of sincerity. CHAPTER X. - THE PICKING UP OF SOME SILVER THREADS. "Mabin!" "' "On!" A single syllable hardly conveys the amount of alarm, of horror, or paralyzing fright which Mabin put into the exclamation. And yet the occasion was an ordinary one enough. It had simply happened that she had taken her work to the old seat at the edge of the plantation, where the picnics used to take place in the old days, and that Rudolph had come up softly over the fields without her hearing hisjfootsteps on the yielding grass. "1 frightened you?" "N—no, no exactly; but you made me drop my needle. I thought you were at Portsmouth!" "So I was. But that isn't five thousand miles off. I came back this morning." Mabin said nothing. She had not seen him for a in fact, since the morning when he had met her on the seashore, and when he had applauded her resolution of sleeping in the room in which Mrs Dale had had her bad dream. He had been called away suddenly on the following day, and had therefore heard nothing of Mabin's adventure.

| "Haven't you any neyy3 for me? I had rather expected a budget." Now, Mabin had a budget for him, and had been looking forward most anxiously for his return, that she might confide in,him some of the suspicions, the surmises,which filled her brain by day,. even kept her awake at night. But, as usual with events long looked forward to, this return of Rudolph had not place as she expected, and she found herself in a state of unreadiness to meet him.

In the first place, she felt so ridiculously excited, so absurdly glad, that all the things she had been sorting up in her mind to tell him dwindled into dudden insignificance. What did they matter, what did anything matter just now, except that Rudolph had come back, and that she must try not to let him guess how glad she was? "Yes," she said deliberately, after a short'pause, looking across the clover-field to the sea, and carefully choosing another needle. "I have plenty to tell you. I had it all ready, but —but you came upon me so suddenly that you have scattered all the threads of the story, and now I don't remember where to ibegin." .. "I'm so very gsorry. First you say I made you lose your needle, and then I scatter your threads. I'm afraid you think me in the way."

,No answer. ."Must I go?" Rudolph got up and drew back a step, standing in the long, rank grass which bordered the cloverfield in the shade of the trees of the plantation. "If I say yes, I suppose you will say I'm being rude again!" answered Mabin, as she threw up at him. from under her big shady hat, a shy glance so full of attraction in its unconscious coquetry that Rudolph also forget the budget and thought he had never seen any gir 1

look hair so Oi.T.'tty as she did. "1. should any," remarked he, bending his head as he spoke, and looking with great apparent interest at the work in her hands, "that you were unk nd." There wa* another pause. Never before, even in the early days of her shyness, had Mabin found speech with him to difficult. A lump seemed to rise in her throat whenever she had a remark leady, and, lor fear of betraying the fact, she remained silent altogether. It was odd, too, that Rudolph, who had always be. n so fluent of speech himself, and had made her seem so dull, had now become infected with her own stupid reticence. "You Jare a long time finding a needle," said he at last. "Yes. I —l seem to have lost all the fine ones," replied Mabin, bending her head still lower than before over her needle-case. "Let me help you. Give me the work first, so that I can judge what size you want," "How can you .tell—a man?" asked Mabin, with indignation. And in her contempt she looked up at him again. - "Oh-ho. madam! Don't you know that we sailors can use a needle as well as any woman. Here, let me show you." This was an admirable opportunity for seating himself on the berch beside her; and Rudolph, who had felt a strange ( hesitation about doing so before, now took the plunge, and placed himself on the end of the wooden seat. "What is this? A tidy?" "No; a cooking-apron." "How interesting! Ladies ought not to make such things. They should do things that want lots of bundles of silks of all sorts of colours. This isn't sufficiently*decorative." "You mean fancy-work!" exclaimed Mabin, with an expression of horror. "I hate fancy-work!" , "Girls who do fancy-work can always give a fellow things they have made themselves to remember them by. I have a heap of tobacco-pouches, all very pretty and too good to use. Now, you couldn't give a,fellow a cooking-apron to remember you by, could you?" "I shouldn't want anybody to remember me—with a lot of other girls!" retorted Mabin fiercely.

And then she felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and she thrust the needle-case quickly into his hands. "Find one now, find one!" cried she imperiously, "and let me see what you can do. I believe you are only boasting when you say you can sew." ,

Rudolph took the apron from her and the needle-case, found a needle of the size he wanted in half the time she had spent in searching for one and took up her hem where she had left off, working with fine, even stitches which called forth her unwilling admiration. "Why," she cried, in great surprise, "you do it beautifully! It's far better than mine!" "Of course it is," remarked Rudolph, calmly. "Whatever the superior sex does bears, of course, the mark of superiority. The only thing that women can do really well is to receive prettily the attentions of the opposite sex; it is useless for them to try to emulate. You used to do it very well once. I am hoping you haven't lost the knack." "You haven't lost your old knack of conceit, I see." "Oh, no, I have just the same opinion of myself and just the same opinion of you as when you used to send me wading into the pools between the rocks to get little crabs for you, and into the hedges for birds' eggs, one from each nest, don't you remember? And when you used to make me so proud by saying I found them quicker than anybody else. And then-r-do you remember what you used to do then?" "Break them on the way home, I suppose?" said she, trying to look as if she had forgotten. "Come, don't you really remember any better than that?" He had exhausted his needleful of thread, and handed her back the apron. So that he was at leisure to watch her face as she folded the big piece of holland, and collected the odds and ends of her work-bag. And it was quite clear to him that her memory was as true as his. "Don't you remembei that you always gave me a kiss when I found a robin's rest?" "No, indeed, I don't." But she did. Eyes, cheeks, and mouth all betrayed the scandalizing recollection.

"And used to promise to marry me when you grew up? Now, do you mean to say you've forgotten that?" (To be Continued).