Hugh Gretton's Secret.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8488, 16 July 1907, Page 2

Hugh Gretton's Secret.

By HI? FIE ABSJ&AIBS EOFI.AK3S. Author <>f "Sclina a Tjove Story." ( 'A Splendid Heart," "Brave Barbara"The 'Temptation of Mary liar," "J.he Interloperetc., etc.

® CHAPTER XVll.—Continued. Lauy Yelvertoun dropped into the chair Sigrid had occupied; she did this deliberately. "You know why I am here —in this way?" she asked abruptly, after awhile, throwing aside her heavy furs. The firelight shone and glowed on Mrs Harlowe's worn face; it had a strange expression upon it. "I exrjectcd you to come, though perhaps'hardly so soon, Althea," she answered. Lady Yelvertoun unclasped her jewelled scent-bottle, inhaled it for a moment, then shut it with a snap. "How the old leaven works in you still!" she said bitterly. "Of all the people who have passed and repassed in my life, it has been left for you to try and sting me, to try and do me harm. Philippa." Mrs Harlowe's brows contracted slightly. "I meet your reproach with another. Why did you play with me?" was her answer. "Why have you tried to make me believe the false was true ? Do you think I have not known, Althea, all these long and many years, how cleverly you imagined you had deceived me? If I have stung you, as you say, it was because the truth in me rose up against your deception. I never willingly gave you a harsh thought. I clung long to my first feelings. Faith and love such as I gave you in those old days lived for a long time, for I saw, or thought I saw, extenuating circumstances; but there comes an end even to such faith as mine." The invalid's hands moved restless ly to and fro; the silence was oppressive. "I do not think I should have ever said so much to you at this late date, Althea, had not the strangest circumstances brought me into a position where plain speaking becomes a necessity," Mrs Harlowe went on slowly, after that pause. "I recognised long ago how futile it would be to appeal to your heart." She turned her beautiful blind eyes upon that stately figure sitting like a statue in the chair. "It was Hugh who showed me the truth, Althea—Hugh who let me know how poor a thing was the nature we had both worshipped. While you were telling me what fiction best served your ends, Hugh was writing me the whole truth." "Ah!" The word seemed to come from Lady Yelvertoun's lips like a sigh. The next instant, however, she was speaking in her usual cold, semi-contemptuous tone. "Your penchant for impossible people was always amazing to me. That you should have credited any statement made by any one who was openly a dishonour to his family, proves to me that you never were qualified to deal with things justly or decorously." ""Hugh Huntingdon never did a dishonourable action in his life, Althea," the other returned, half passionately. Lady Yelvertoun shrugged her shoulders. "As I said, you always had a penchant for impossible people." "Oh!" the-woman on the couch exclaimed, with a soft cry — "oh! let us be done at last with falseness and mockery.*?lt suited you, Althea, to doubt andfturn away from the man who loved you so unwisely, but in your heart you know that old story of shame brought against him was ne?er true —never really substantiated. He was condemned on circumstances alone. Had you stood loyal to him, do you suppose Hugh would ever have acted as he did? Ever have turned and left the case against him unfought? It was you who exiled him, Althea—you who have the burden of his broken heart, and life upon your soul! However," Philippa Harlowe continued, conquering her emotion by an effort, and speaking more quietly, "I did not bring you here to go through that old story. It is done, and dead, your life has been an unbroken triumph, ; What was Hugh Huntingdon's love | and ruin to you, when you were the chosen wite of the Earl of Yelvertoun? Since you trod the story of your love under your feet, who or what was there to raise it up again? , Let us go from it. Whether Hugh be dead or alive matters nothing now. It is years since I heard from him, and though I never forget him in my prayers, I have no wish to bring him back here again, I assure you. I care for him far too much!" Lady Yelvertoun once again unclasped her scent-bottle and sniffed it : slowly. "Your sympathy with this man carries you very far, Philippa," she said, as dryly it seemed as though the words half choked her. "Has it ever occurred to you that this brokenhearted creature, this victim of an unproved accusation —as you call it—found so much joy and comfort in his exile that he entered almost immediately into another marriage, and had children born to him?" Mrs Harlowe paused. "This may be true or not," she said, half feebly. "I know not. I tell you it is years since I have heard from him. The l«*3t letter came almost seventeen years ago. In that there was no mention of any marriage. He told me he had changed his name, and was going up the country with another Englishman, a man who was a widower with one child. Since then the silence between us has been the silence [of j death." A similar silence reigned in the room for a long time. Lady Yelvertoun had closed her salts-bottle, and was sittnig back in her chair, breathing very hard. She spoke at last; her voice had become hoarse and strained. "Toil wish to question me?" she

said. "You wrote something about Hannah —and a cross-examination." "I wish to know the truth about ! Sigrid." "Why is this girl's birth or story so interesting to you?" was the | fretful query put next. ' "I love her," Mrs Harlowe said simply. "Years ago, in my happy days, when Robert was with me, we 1 went for a tour in sunny France, ' and one of our halting-places was the convent where Marie Le Mesurier, my cousin, has her home. There I 1 saw Sigrid as a bab}? —a lovely baby. My heart hungersd for her. She was a waif —a nameless flower of life. I prayed to have her, but they would not part with her. Strange —strange, indeed, it would have been, Althea, had I brought that baby to my childless home. And yet, stranger still, even, is the curious chance that has brought her to me now that she is a woman. Had I but g.uessed what I know now," the weak woman said half fiercely. "I would never have come away without her in those old days!" "You speak—in—enigmas," the other woman said, her hoarse, changed voice not rising above a whisper. "I speak—the truth," Philippa Harlowe answered, still half fiercely. "Oh! Althea, how could you live without that child? Was Yelvertoun, with all his money, his social power, his proud position, worth so terrible an act of unnatural repudiation? To break a man's heart, as you broke your husband Hugh's, was an awful wrong; but to cast your own child out on the world so that you might be free, outwardly, to reign a brilliant queen in society—what words of mine can speak the breadth and depth of such a sin?" Lady Yelvertoun's white hand, with its flashing rings, went up to her throat, and tore aside the laces that surrounded it. "What —what are you going to do?"she whispered faintly. There was a volume of terror in her words. It.was the terror of the worldling who stands on the brink of social ruin. Mrs Harlowe was irilen fc so long that her guest seemed to suffocate. When she again spoke she spoke calmly, contemptuously: "You need not fear me, Althea. My feeling in this matter is not a revengeful one. You sacrificed everything for position—the world has been your god. So far as my hands are concerned, your god shall be left to you. Sigrid shall never know she is your child. All I shall tell her is that she is the child of an honourable and fully legalized marriage. She will be content, with that. She will be content, too, I think," the blind woman said very softly "to be called my child in the future. To tell her all would be to put an endless grief in her heart; and, if I know her nature well, she would rather suffer to remain a mystery all her Jife, than purchase knowledge at the cost of her mother's public shame. For to proclaim the fact that you were married to Hugh Huntingdon would be to tell the world, Althea, you never had the right to call yourself Countess of Yelvertoun, rememher!" "Oh! you hurt me—you hurt me, Philippa!" the woman crouching in the chair opposite, cried out in anguish. She suddenly rose and stood beside Mrs Harlowe's couch. "I heard he was dead," she said, in a passionate whisper; "the —the news came just after the child was born. You will remember I was abroad. Hannah alone has known all the truth. It was she who arranged everything. There was my family to be deceived you everybody! Heaven knows how it all went so smoothly! The baby I never saw. Hannah found some home for it. It was destiny, I suppose, that made the woman who had care of it die so strangely near that convent. Hannah, ever watchful, saw the child by the nuns; she said it was the hand of Providence. When she grew to girlhood, it was Hannah who s"ggested bringing her to my home, to have her with me always. She said it would be more safe. But it was horrible—it was a living accusation! I—l could not endure it. I " A sort of exhaustion fell upon the speaker; she half reeled, and sank into a chair. Mrs Harlowe's true woman's heart was touched, even though the selfishness was so enormous. (To be continued.)