THE LADY IN BLACK.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8443, 16 May 1907, Page 2

THE LADY IN BLACK.

CHAPTER Xlll.—Continued. Mrs Dale stared with wide-open, dull eyes at the forms of the two . servancs, as they left the room. Then she turned her head slowly, and • looked long at the young girl ■ whose arm was lo.v around her. "Why are you so kind to me now?" she asked at last, in a weak and almost childish voice, that Went straight to Mabin's heart. " "You were not kind last night!" The first answer Mabin gave was a plight pressure of the arm upon Mr 3 Dale's shoulder. Then Mabin bent „ down and whispered in her ear: "I didn't know so much then!" The little, slender form in her arm shivered. "What—what do you know now?" Then, recollecting the events which had preceded her cwn, loss of consciousness, she suddenly sprang off the sofa. "I know! I know! That cruel woman told you! I must go to her! Oh, I must go!" "Well, let me arrange your dress first." And Mrs Dale then perceived that the upper part of her bpdice had been unfastened by the maids, and that her face was still wet from the sprinkling of water they had given her. She submitted to Mabin's assistance, therefore,, in arranging- her hair and her dress, without another word baing exchanged between them. "When she was ready ta go, however, she stopped on her way to the door, and gave Mabin one long, curious look. It made the girl spring forward, with a world of sympathy in her eyes. "Oh, I'm so sorry for you!" she whispered. "So very, very sorry! Much more than before I knew anything." Then Mrs Dale gave way, and seeming for the first time to recover her powers of thought and of speech, she sank down on the nearest chair, and burst into tears, natural, soothing tears, while she poured into Mabin's ears a broken, incoherent con- ' fession: "It is quite true that I did it —did what she told you. But you know—oh! Mabin you do know how bitterly I have repented it! 1 would have given my * life to have been able to live those few minutes over again! What did she tell you? Tell me, tell me! And how did she say it? Of course, she made the very worst of it; but it was bad enough without that. Oh, Mabin, Mabin! Don't you think she might forgive me now?" While she talked in this wandering and excited way, Mabin hardly j knew what to do; whether to try to avert her thoughts, or to let her know in what a vixenish and hard manner the elder woman had made the announcement |of||the terrible action which had cut short one life and ruined another. - "Of course, she ought to forgive you!" she said, at last. "But you must not give way> to despair if she does not. She is a hard woman; she will never treat you as tenderly as you own friends do." She paused, not liking to tell Mrs Dale that the visitor was waiting for her, and wondering whether her friend had forgotten the fact. As she glanced toward the door, Mrs Dale caught her eye, and suddenly threw herself upon her kneea, burying her head in the girl's lap. "Oh, I daren't, I daren't go in—just yet!" she whispered almost pleadingly. "I know I sent for her; I know I must see her; but now that the moment has come, I feel as if I could not bear it. I know how she will-100k —what she will say. And it is upon her, all „upon her, that my life, my very life depends!" Mabin said nothing. She could not help thinking, from the wild words and wilder manner of the wretched woman before hor, that the great strain of her crime and her x-epent-ance had ended by weakening her mind. Unless The girl drew a long breath, frightened by the awful possibility, which had just occurred to her, that the grim visitor in the drawingroom had been threatening Mrs Dale with the extreme penalty of her crime. Mrs Dale's wdrds. "My life depends upon her!" were explicit enough. Instinctively, Mabin's arm closed more tigl.t'.y round the sobbirg woriian. "Hush, hush, my dear!" she whispered soothingly. "She will not dare, she will riot dare to be more cruel than she has been already! You must try and be brave, and to bear her hard words; but she won't do anything more than scold you!" In the midst of her grief, Mrs Dale looked up in the girl's face with a sad smile. "Oh, she has dared so much more than that already!" she said hopelessly. "I don't want to excuse myself —nothing can excuse me—but'l want you to know the share she had in it all. For she had a share. It would never have happened but for her." Mrs Dale sprang to her feet, and, walk'ng up and down with her little white hands clenched till the nails marked her flesh, she began to pour into the young girl's ears a story which kept her hearer fascinated, spellbound. "Listen, listen!" said Mrs Dale, in a low, breathless voice, glancing at the girl. "It is not a story for you; I would never have told you a word of it if it had not been forced upon us both. But now, as you have heard so much, told in one way, you must hear the rest, told in another." Mabin said nothing. In fact, it seemed to her that Mrs Dale hardly cared whether she listened or not. She went on with her story in the same hurried, monotonous tone, as if it was merely the relief of putting it into words that she wanted: "I had always been spoiled, always had my own way, until I was married.

By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of ft An Infamous Fraud"A Terrible F«. "For Love of Jack," *'The House on the Marsh," etc., etc.

My father and mother hnth di-jd when I was a little thing o! six, and I lived with iny guardian a!;d his family, and they let me do .iuf.l as I liked. I was supposed Co i-' rich, almost an heiress; bat wlte*» my guardian died it was foin.il that the money had all gone; I ban nothing. I was not yet eighteen the::. And Sir Geoffrey Mailyan war. ted to marry me. Everyone said I must; that there was nothing else for me to do. I didn't care for him; but I didn't care for any one else; • ;:o nobody thought it mattered. It was taken for granted, don't you see, that there was no question of my saying no." Mrs Dale stopped short, and for the first time looked at Mabin. "That's what people always think, that it doesn't matter whom a girl marries, if she's very young. But it does; oh, it does! And he had a brother " Mabin started and thought at once of Mr Banks. "A younger brother, who had been ordered home from India, on sickleave.' No, I didn't care for him," she went on, emphatically, reading the expression of sympathy on the girl's face. "But he was livelier than his grave brother, my husband, and we were very good friends. Nobody would have thought that there was any harm in that if old' Lady Mailyan hadn't interfered. You can guess now, I suppose, who Lady Mailyan is?" Mabin nodded emphatically, without speaking. "She came posting to the place to find out the evil which was only in her own mind. We had been getiting on quite well together, my husband and I. I was rather afraid of him. but I liked him, and he was kind o me. 1 believe he was really fond of of me, and that I should have grown fond of hira. I was fond of him, in a way; but he was fifteen years older than I, and very quiet and grave in his manner. But he Ist me do what I liked, and took me to all the dances and races and amusements I wanted, and was proud of me, and seemed pleased that I should enjoy myself. "But when his mother came, everything was changed. She had great influence with him, and she told him that he was spoiling me, and making me fit for nothing but amusement, and that these constant gaieties were i ruining my character. And so he told me, very gently, very kindly, that I must settle down and live a quieter life. ■' . "I disappointed, and not too grateful to Lady Mailyan. Would you have been? Would anybody have been? But I submitted. There were some scenes first, of course. I had been spoiled; 1 am bad-tempered, I know; and I was indignant with his mother for her interference. What harm had I been doing, after all? I was not unhappy, however, and it was easy to-reconcile myself to everything but to her. For she seemed to have settled down in my husband's house and I did not dare to hint that I resented this. "Then things went on smoothly for a time. I had given up balls and races, and nearly all that my mother-in-law was pleased to call 'dissipations.' But now that I wasoftener at home I naturally saw more of Willie, my husband's brother, than before, since he was not strong enough to go out so much as Sir Geoffrey and I had done. "We were all very anxious about him, as he seemed to be on the verge of consumption. He was very bright and amusing, however, even then,, and I was certainly more at ease with him than I was with my mother-in-law, or even with my own husband, who was a silent and undemonstrative man;. But it was shameful of Lady Mailyan to suspect that I cared more for him than for my husband; it never entered into his head or mine to suppose any one would think such a wicked thing; and certainly Sir Geoffrey would never have harbored such a suspicion except at the suggestion of his mother. "I cannot tell you, child, of the wretchedness this miserable old woman brought about, in her jealousy at Sir Geoffrey's love for me, and her anxiety to get back the influence over him which she thought I had usurped. Of course, if I had been an older woman, as old as I am now, for example, I should have rebelled; I should have insisted on her leaving the house where she had brought nothing but misery. I should have known how to take my proper place as mistress of the house in which she was only an interloper." (To be Continued.)