Hugh Gretton's Secret.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8478, 4 July 1907, Page 2

Hugh Gretton's Secret.

By SFFIE ADELAIDE StOWI»ANDS. 'Author of "Senna* Love Story," "A Splendid Heart » -'Brave Barbara,» "The Temptation of Mary Bar," "Ihe Interloper t " etc., etc.

CHAPTER X. —Continued. •'Dsai Mrs Bynge"-vvas what the giri had written —"Believe me, I am quii.2 unable to tall you how touched I am by your most kind letter received this morning. Such goodlies? will be remembered by me gratefully all my life. Ic will seem, I fear, almost unkind on my part to announce to von, as I now do, that I am unable to respond to your offer and \pay y° u n s h° r t visit. Since writing to you, yesterday, mv plans for my immediate future have been arranged for me, and I am therefore not free to act as I should like to do. X leave fcc-day for .London, and am going to the house of a relative of one of the dear sisters who were so good to mc when I was a child. On receiving my letter, this sister must have af once communicated _ with this lady in London, for I received a long communication last night, offering me a temporary home at the request of Sister Marie, and assuring me of every sympathy for the sake of the good woman we both love. Every arrangement had been made for me in this letter, and I had nothing to do but send a telegram m reply, accenting or declining the offer." I accepted it, and my telegram had just gone when your kind letter came.

upon Millicent's constitution, mother: she seemed to me to be very delicate." Mrs Bynge's eyes filled with tears. *"She is like some fragile flower," she said. "Oh! Johnnie, we must all love her very dearly. She belongs to us now, and it seems to me as if her life itself lay in our hands, to be kept vigorous only by our love!" John Bynge heard these words with but a dim comprehension of their meaning at this moment. The fuil and complete translation of them was destined to come to him before long, however, burdened with an anguish of heart and a depth of despair unfathomable.

CH4PTER XI

"I think, indeed, i ought never to be sad or depressed again, when it has been proved to me so sweetly how much tender thought there is in the world. I shall hope some day that I my meet you, to tell you, if I can, how beautiful I have found your sympathy and goodness. lam sending this letter by Charlotte, from whom I part as from a friend, and who will tell you much that I have not space to write here. I hope from my heart that pool' Miss Gretton is better. I have sorrowed with her, although she is a stranger to me ; but such grief touches every one. Please give my kindest remembrances to Sir John Bynge, and to your daughter, and with heartfelt gratitude, "Believe me, yours most sincerely, "SIGRID CARLETON."

The address of her new home was added at the bottom of the letter. John Bynge noted, with the only gleam of satisfaction that came to him in this moment, that the girl's destination was one of the richest and most fashionable quarters of the West End.

He folded the letter mechanically as his mother went on to tell him all she had learned from Charlotte. "The child is passing through something like a romance," she said. "It appears this lady who has come forward so readily is evidently a personage of wealth and importance. A maid was despatched early this morning to take Miss Carleton back, and Charlotte says—she travelled up with them to town —that a beautiful carriage was waiting at the station when they arrived. 1 know nobody in the London world, but no doubt this Mrs Harlowe is some one you know Johnnie?" , Sir John shook his head.

"But then," he added, "1 really know so few people in London. I have never mixed in the fashionable set. lam glad everything seems so pleasant for her, poor girl! As you say, mother, it is all very like a romance." He stood up here and gave back the letter to Mrs Bynge. "Not much romance when she was with Lady Yelvertoun," he added grimly. He was bitterly disappointed; it was quite impossible for him to dissemble his feelines, and his mother noticed everything with a little pang. Where is the devoted mother who does not grudge just a tiny little bit the dawn of a deep, soul-engrossing passion in her son's life? Gertrude Bynge was divided in her feelings where Sigrid was concerned. She could not help liking the girl, whose simple, old-fashioned letter seemed to come straight from a sweet, true young heart, but she could not help a faint touch of jealous pain searing over her mother's love as she realized how deep was the girl's power over her son, and how utterly unconscious Sirgid foas of the trouble she had already sowed in John Binge's hitherto calm and contented being.

"Would you care to see Charlotte?" she asked him. "You may iike to question her yourself." But Sir John shook his head again. "There is nothing more to be said about the matter. I am only sorry we were not first in the field with an offer of assistance." Then John smiled rather satirically as he filled a favourite pipe. "What a relief for Sylvia's mind, mother, when she knows that the Romanist stranger is safely housed elsewhere, eh?" Mrs Bynge colored faintly. In a far off sort of way she also scented the element of a reproach to herself in these words. Well, truthfully she could not confess that this new development was not something in the light of a comfort to her and yet she knew she was not wholly just to Sigrid in such a thought. Moreover, the very danger she had feared was more than half-way accomplished already for an interest had been aroused in John Bynge's heart that would inevitably be strengthened by this last strange trick of fate. She stood a little uncomfortably silent for a time, and then she asked John if he would come up to her boudoir in little while.

"1 have persuaded that poor child to leave her room and come into mine for an hour br so. She asked for you. Will you come Johnnie, dear, when you have smoked your pipe?" "1 will come now," he answered instantly, and he as instantly put aside his briarwood. "I am glad, indeed, to know she is able to come among us so soon. Do you know I have been fearing a lasting effect

A WILLING PROMISE. j To wake up in a dainty room, and find herself surrounded with all the appurtenances and environments of wealth, was in <x sense, no new thing to Sigrid Carleton. During her three years of association and travel with Lady Yelvertoun she had not merely slipped away from the severe simplicity of her convent life, but had had ample opportunity to become more or less accustomed to the attributes of wealth, more especially to the luxury of hotel life. Not infrequently —though why this had been so Sigrid had never been able to determine —Lady Yelvertoun had commanded that the girl should sleep in a room adjoining her own, sometimes even dictating that a &maJler bed should be put up in her own apartment for Sigrid to occupy; and as Lady Yelvertoun lived in the very atmosphere of regal luxury itself it was but natural the girl should become used by degrees to the influence of costly things about her, even though they did not belong to her. Her arrival as a guest, therefore, in a spacious, splendidly appointed house, had no element of novelty to her, though it was, nevertheless, very strange for her to realize that her place in such a house was not to be a humble one. She went to join this unknown Mrs Harlowe with that simplicity and earnest faith in the wisdom and guidance of her dear friends at the convent that had always been so strong with her where they were concerned. She knew less, indeed, of Sister Marie than of many of the other sisters; nevertheless, she had accepted the arrangement made for her by this particular sister with the obedience that had been the strongest part of her early education. Strange and new scenes could not startle her now. She drove through the streets of London in Mrs Harlowe's beautiful cai-riage with almost the same troubled, questioning feeling that she had driven, through them a year or so before in Lady Yelvertoun's carriage.

Perhaps the sensation most dominant in the girl's thoughts was a wistful longing to be done this life of change and moving \events, and to know peace and rest once again. It was with a disappointment akin to grief that she realized she must, for a time at least, defer going back to the convent. Her sudden dismissal by Lady Yelvertoun had startled and unhinged her. She felt that frightened, destitute feeling that a young child experiences when it is let fur the first time co stand utterly alone, dependent .

tirely on its individual strength. She had been very, very unhappy while she was with Lady Yelvertoun; still she had never been quite alone. Sigrid smiled faintly to herself as she recalled her moments of silent longing for independence; she had, however confessed frankly to herself, up in her lonely little room at Southhampton Hotel, that in her imagina-, tion she had given a roseate touch to this independence which did not exist in reality. The letter that brought her news that a haven was open to her took from her heart a weight as of iron. She had j been deeply, sensibly touched by "Mrs Bynge's letter, and felt a pang at having to refuse such a kindness. ~ <

John Bynge's pleasant face and handsome eyes rose up before her as she sat down to write to his She coloured faintly as she remembered him; his kindness to her the night of her loneliness at Southampton was something she would never forget, and in a dim, vague way her mind conjured up many other moments of kindliness and courtesy she had received from him. ; (To be continued.) f