Hugh Gretton's Secret.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8476, 2 July 1907, Page 2

Hugh Gretton's Secret.

CHAPTER IX. —Continued. A mother's heart has many little tendrils of intuitive feeling, of unconscious knowledge: and truly it did not need much natural intuition to warn her, when she had come face to face with Sigrid, that the girl was one who coulii be most innocently dangerous to such a rnan as her son John. She had only felt this dimly v/hen she had spoken with Sigrid in the Southampton hotel parlour; now, ; t was much too clearly discernible ix) be pleasant to her. For with all her sweetness, her tender womanliness and charity, Gertrude Bynge was not without her share of more worldly qualities, and where John was concerned there was no limit to her pride and ambition. She felt, as she gave the dogs this second and most unexpected allowance of cake and milk, that 'she was going very swiftly ahead in her dismayed surprise and maternal fears; but no one in the wide world was capable of understanding and judging her boy's character, as she was, and his attitude toward the girl Lady Yelvertoun had deserted so strangely was to Mrs Bynge one full of significance and: possible development. She was stoutly determined, however to keep her fears and imaginations to herself, and armed with this feeling, she answered her daughter's last remark cheerily enough.

"Oh," she said, as unconcernedly as possible, "there is nothing mysterj ious about the matter, Sylvia. First of all, Miss Carleton was not a servant, only a travelling companion to Lady Yelvertoun, and as Johnnie tells me that the countess does not intend to travel again for some time, and Miss Carleton was desirous of returning to France, it was, after all perhaps natural they should separate at Southampton. That we should have offered our help to the girl in her present dilemma was but a reasonable sequence to the matter." Mrs Langtone was not quite satisfied.

"Oh, no doubt that is all right, only what I don't understand is why you need trouble yourself about this girl's future arrangements. She surely has the right to ask help of Lady Yelvertoun rather than of strangers, if she has need of any help. It is so like Johnnie, however," Sylvia Langtone exclaimed, as she rose to go; "he is always doing something different from anybody else. I do believe no one but he would have dreamed of undertaking this guardianship of a girl who is practically a stranger; and then, not content with burdening himself with responsibilities, and turning your home into a house of mourning and illness he wants to foist another strange person upon you all! Frankly," Mrs Langtone observed,' 1 as if to speak with commendable but disagreeable openness were not an hourly habit of hers, "frankly, my dear mother, if you take my advice you will object to any more new departures. Miss Gretton, of course, must be accepted now, but injthe matter of this other girl "

"Oh!" said Mrs Bynge with a cheerfulness which was by no means honest or well felt, "you can leave this matter in my hands, Sylvia. I shall arrange something. Miss Carleton is a nice young 1 creature, and I shall be glad to help her. No doubt she has some plans of her own, while all the time we are very busy considering what is to be done with her."

Mrs Langtone kissed her mother dubiously, and then she picked up a photograph of Millicent Gretton which Sir John had unearthed from his possessions, and placed in his mother's boudoir. It was a' charming portrait of the girl, taken when she was in California, and as Mrs Langtone looked at it a more amiable and satisfied expression stole gradually over her face. "She is certainly quite present-, able!" was what she said. Then, after a very little pause, "How rich did you "tell me she was, mother?" she asked slowly. Mrs Bynge shook her head at this. "It seems impossible for the moment to know the exact amount of her fortune, but it is undoubtedly I very large. Her father, so Johnnie I tells me, had many commercial interests on this side of the world, as well as the other. I almost wish," Mrs Bynge said wistfully, "that the wealth were not so great; it makes Johnnie's position a very responsible and difficult one." "He must let Philip help him," Mrs Langtone said; adding sententiously, "Such duties should be undertaken with a full sense of the spiritual as well as the material difficulties attached to them." And after this she went away and left Mrs Bynge to sit musingly before the fire, feeling a strange unhomely sensation upon her even in this, the vez - y heart of her well-loved home. Later on when Sir John came in to find her she was seated at her writing-table, and the first letter his eye caught was directed to the girl he was thinking about now with such a rush of new and bewildered feelings—feelings that were half amazed, wholly delightful. He was instantly touched by what he mutely recognized as a little sacrifice of his mother's will to his own. Stooping over her he kissed her softly while a curious little thrill came over him as he immediately conjured up a vision of the morrow when Sigrid would be under his 1 roof. 1 "So, Sylvia has left you still i alive?" he queried, with a twinkle in his eye. "What a dear, sleek prosperous little mass of senten- ' tiousness and righteousness she has i grown to be!" Mrs Bynge smiled, but faintly. j She had understood the silent '

By EFFZE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS. Author of "Sethia s I,ove Story," t( A Splendid 11 cart t " "Brave Barbara"The Temptation of Mar if Bar," "Ihe Interloper," etc., etc. •

meaning of his kiss far better than he himself. "Sylvia's heart is in the right place," she answered him a little constrainedly. Sir John returned her smile. "Otherwise she would not be my mother's child." he answered; then seeing Millicent's picture on the table, his eyes twinkled again. "I suppose my new position offers a text for a good sermon eh, mother? Or," before Mrs Bynge could speak, "does the indisputable fact of Miss Gretton's wealth lighten the otherwise regrettable folly I should have been guilty of committing?" Mrs Bynge put down her pen. "Sylvia was asking me about Millicent's fortune just now. I could tell her very little however. Will you have much business matters to discuss with the lawyers?" Sir John at once followed his mother's lead, and avoided further discussion of his sister. "I scarcely know what I shall bewailed upon to do as yet. Gretton's affairs as I told you the other day are apparently in perfect order; still, time may develop difficulties. I hope not. His will is certainly simplicity itself. It leaves every penny of which he is possessed, with the exception of a few legacies, to his daughter.'' "She inherits this money unconditionally?" "Unconditionally," John Bynge answered. "I confess," he said fi-ankly, a moment later, "that I had more or less prepared myself to find some other wishes expressed in the few words he dictated to Dunning during the voyage; but I find noth in in this paper but directions concerning his business agents, some addresses, etc.; and the fact, repeated and witnessed by the valet, that he desired me to be his child's sole guardian." "And he makes no further provision in the event of " Mrs Bynge's voice faltered even in suggesting so sorrowful a possibility—"in the event of anything happening to you, my dear one?" John shook Lis head.

" I suppose he counts upon my living to a good age, or perhaps he imagines, what is quite as natural, that Millicent will marry before very long, and I shall not be required after that." Mrs Bynge looked at her handsome son, and tu her it seemed as if tke future of Millicent Gretton should be simple enough. "Do you suppose that she has any such thought herself?" she queried. Sir John smiled. "Of course she may have left her heart out at the antipodes, but somehow I don't'fancy she has. She is a pretty, attractive girl, however, and she is sure to be run after once she is introduced into the world of English society. Lady Yelvertoun seemed to think she ought to make a brilliant match. I think she had already metaphorically secured the Gretton money for her nephew, to whom, no it would not come amiss; as I fancy, while her ladyship lives, the Yelvertoun estates do not yield much to the present holder of the title."

Mrs Bynge rapped her writingtable absently with her pen. The thought that had been so patent in Sylvia Langtone's mind when looking at Millicent's picture had come to Sir John's mother almost in the first moment of realizing his new position. It need hardly be said that a very different motive had engendered these two thoughts. In fact the remembrance of Miss Gretton's great wealth, Mrs Bynge had instantly foreseen would be, more than possible under ordinary circumstances, a barrier in the pathway of a futurs romance. Womanlike, however, she had instantly imagined that the romance had come first, and the thought of Millicent's fortune had not assumed any great significance to her then. The tenderness with which John had led the broken-hearted girl to her arms had misled his mother. She saw now the mistake she had made, and very curiously she deplored this fact. Millicent Gretton's whole personality had appealed to her. As she had garnered the weeping, fair-haired, delicate girl to her heart, she had felt vaguely that she was embracing her boy's future wife, and it cost her something to have to realize now that this supposition was wholly without foundation. (To be continued.)