Hugh Gretton's Secret.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8486, 13 July 1907, Page 2

Hugh Gretton's Secret.

By EFFIE ADELAIDES ROWLANDS. Author of "Selinas Love Stor;/," "A Bp lent i li l r **" irtl "Brave Barbara," "The Temptation of Maty Bar," "Ihe Interloper," etc., etc.

CHAPTER XV.—Continued. Others might have credited this manner with a clever piece of acting on the part of a nameless and penniless girl, but for ali his experience and inexperience, Lord Yelvertoun knew better. ■,•*,,. "She'il marry a man a deuced sight better than I," he said to himself lTiiseVabiv. It was very hard to realize that he might, even in his imagination, play a secondary part to some other man. "I wonder if she is in love with anybody now?" was his next hotly expressed thought. Then he shook his head as he put Iris tea-cup on the table and looked again at the girl's face. "No," he said to himself with the proud conviction of one who knew what he was dealing with —"no, she's just the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world, and I'd give all I have to know she was happy and cared for, if even she never looked at me again. But she's as cold as she is lovely. I'll bet anything Sigrid will go through life and never know what love means." A singularly wrong impression for this clever young man to make, for at that very moment the heart of Sigrid Carfeton was aglow with the throbbing life of a love, tender, passionate and absorbing, a love that would ft.de only with the chilling touch of death's embrace! CHAPTER XVI. SIR JOHN EXPERIENCES A SHOCK. The visit of the London doctor to Big Drylstone had occurred about a week after John's journey to London, and had passed over remarkably well in one sense, though not in another. Millicent had been introduced to the gray-haired guest with not the smallest suspicion of how important a person he was, or how keenly she was scrutinized by him. Thus, being quite unconscious, the girl's physical condition was put before the physician, unhamperd by nervousness, and an opinion could be given more freely. Sir John drove Sir Oswald Leighton to the station on the morning following the physician's arrival, as a guest to dine and sleep at Big Drylstone. The doctor's opinion was given frankly. So far as could be judged without an examination of the lungs, everything about Millicent pointed to a consumptive suggestion, if not an actual tendency. Sir Oswald shook his head over John's eager proposal of a visit abroad; he preferred that the girl should remain in England. "I have strong feelings on this subject, Sir John," he said, "and 1 never advocate the fatigue and risk of travelling if it can be avoided. Where the circumstances of daily life are poor and strained, perhaps a sojourn in the South may do good; but situated as Miss Gretton is in that beautiful, large warm house, in this healthy part of the country, I do not think she would benefit even a little by going abroad. After all, my supposition may be wrong;.the girl has had a very severe mental strain, and the action of the mind frequently takes a physical expression. I will see her again in about a fortnight. Your jnother has my prescriptions and directions. Keep up her strength, that is the great thing. Make her as happy as you can." John Bynge watched the train roll out of the station in troubled silence. What it cost him to let that train go to London and leave him behind, it was not possible for him to say. His whole being yearned to be once again in the exquisite sunshiae of Sigrid's loveliness. He had gone about his daily life since he had parted from her with a hazy, blurred sense of the meaning of everything. He got no further than that pictured remembrance of himself looking into those violet-blue eyes, giving out in that eloquent si lence the whole written and unwritten history of his love. "I will write to her," he said to himself, as he turned and drove tuck to his home; "she asked me to let her know what the doctor said. 1 will send her a few words." It was a happy inspiration. Nothing definite as to their future had come to him in the hours that had gone since he left her. It was enough to realize that she knew his love and that she desired to have some kinship with him. That she would'love him some day seemed no presumptive dream now. They had stood mentally heart to heart in that one moment; he had seen her bewilderment melt gradually into another expression, one he was not quite schooled to read, but which was certainly not cold or hard. Millicent's health was so paramount an anxiety with him, that John did not feel free to dwell on the golden promise of his future, as he would most undoubtedly have done under other circumstances. He drove back very quickly, and at the gates he met his sister Sylvia on horseback. Mrs Langton e never looked better than when she wore a riding-habit. John Bynge was always inclined to both admire and tease his sister about her worldliness in dressing so neatly, and her self-indulgence in keeping a most desirable saddlehorse. This morning he did neither, however. As he saw that she wished to speak to him, he got down from the cart, told the groom to drive on, and stood smoothing the brown satin skin of Mrs Langtone's mare as he answered all her questions. "1 was so anxious, I had to come over as early as I could," she said. John looked a trifle ssurprised. "I did not know you were so fond of Millicent," he said, in fact scarcely realizing he had put a thought into words. i

Mrs Langtone's pretty plump figure stiffened. "Both Rupert and I consider Millicent a sweet girl," she answered him coldly; "but even if I did not like her I should have been anxious just the same to know Sir Oswald's opinion, on your account, Johnnie." "Why on my account?" Sir John asked, a trifle impatiently. Mrs Langtone arched her eyebrows. "Sometimes you are most annoying," was her remark. "Surely," growing a little warmer—"surely, Johnnie, you must recognize that this delicacy of Millicent's is an extra responsibility to your other already heavy ones?" "My dear Sylvia, is that all you stopped to tell me?" Mrs Langtone looked at her brother carefully. He had a harassed air, and there was something in his expression she could not quite understand. Had she been of a different nature she would have refrained from speaking longer on the subject, bjt Mrs Langtone was not exactly the embodiment of tact. She drew her reins through her neatly gloved hand, and struck her whip against her trim habit-skirt. "When are you going to speak to Millicent?" she asked, after that little pause. "Speak to her? What about? Don't you understand, she is not to know anything of what Leighton has said?" "I do not mean anything concerning Sir Oswald." "About what, then?" Sir John spoke impatiently. Mrs Langtone paused another minute. "About yourself and your future. "I do not understand you, Sylvia." It was the woman's turn to be impatient now. "Oh! please don't be so obstinate. Johnnie," she said quickly. "You do know. You must know perfectly well what lam talking about. What is so clear to everybody else cannot really be hidden from you, even if you choose to adopt the role of a blind man." John Bynge's heart stood still for an instant, his hand slipped [from the mare's neck. He at his sister. "Sylvia," he said, "w mean?" Mrs Langtone flushed very red, and then became cooler again. She had left her mother's room only ten minutes before with the expressed determination of speaking quite openly to her brother at the first opportunity. "My dear mother," she had said to Mrs Bynge, in her most dictatorial manner, "it is simply ridiculous to let the matter rest any longer as it is. I am perfectly aware you will urge some quixotic objection on Johnnie"s part to proposing to Millicent because of her wealth. Under ordinary circumstances I grant this might be'urged as an objection, but not as things are. Johnnie, although he is not a millionaire, is certainly not a pauper; and Millicent, while she is so rich, is scarcely his superior in other things. She is a nice girl, and I like her," Mrs Langtone said, condescendingly, her§, "but we know nothing of her parentage or family. What we do know is that she is head over ears in love with Johnnie, that phe is fretting herself ill because he is blind to her affection, and that a marriage between them is quite the best thing that could possibly happen." Mrs Bynge tried to whisper patience to her daughter, but the fact was, Sir Oswald's confirmation of Millicent's delicacy—wrought, as he had said, by so much mental trouble—had broken down the barriers she had been building between Johnnie and his knowledge of the girl's secret. "You had better let me speak to him," she had urged, when she heard all Mrs Langtone had to say, but to this her daughter had a reply ready. "Whatdoes it matter who speaks?" she had asked, and she had then gone away, and it so happened, as she was trotting down the avenue to the gates, that she met her brother. The little conversation between them occupied only a few minutes. A slightly nervous feeling took possession of Sylvia Langtone as she met John's troubled yet eager eyes, and heard that half-bewildered question: "Sylvia, what do you mean?" (To be Continued.)