"THE WEB."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8875, 8 November 1907, Page 2

"THE WEB."

[All Eights Reserved.]

CHAPTER XXl.—Continued. "He had few followers then, and lived in the Wild West camps, where I am told the settlers regarded him as a source of amuse nent. He was poor, and my mother gave him money. My father accused her of marrying him in order that she might wheedle money out of him for a blasphemous charlatan. He refused to listen to any explanation, and one day he left her shortly before I was born. Shj heard from him next from England, when she wrote to him and told him she had a daughter, and that she had named me Alice. He offered to make her an allowance, but she indignantly refused it, tailing him that if sho was not good enough to be his wife, she was proud enough to refuse to be his dependant. With her dying breath she told me she loveJ this man, and I determined that so soon as 1 had money enough 1 would come to England and face him, and would show him this miniature, which she wore to the day of her death." Jack sat like one in a trance, and gazed dimly at tho little locket which the girl drew from her bosom. Dangling it on her finger for a moment she th-ew it on the table and continued her story. "My mother had changed her name to Pollard because* she did not want to be known to any of her old friends, and it was by that name that I was known when I met Theodore Beeton. He was a little older than myself, as you see, and when I was a growing girl he had already gone into business, with his wealthy father. We had played together at the house of our mutual friend, and when my mother died he offered me a position as secretary. By the, orier of the firm, so the cashier insisted 011 telling me, I was paid a salary out of all proportion to my services. I charged him with this, and he asked »ne to be his wife, admitting that the secretaryship was a mere subterfuge in order that he might have me near him. By this time I had saved enough money to come to England, and for some reason 01* the other my uncle suddenly sought me out and began to take an unaccountable interest in me. He told mo that he was making inquiries as to the whereabouts of my father, and that a disciple of his, Conrad Ricardo, was giving him valuable assistance. I offered to remunerate Ricardo for his service;;, and for a while was satisfied to await the results of their efforts. A few weeks ago, however, when Mr Beeton again spoke to me, I told him I could not consent to marry him until I had accomplished a certain mission. He pressed me to tell him what it was, and I told him so much as to explain that I must come to England to meet my uncle, Mr Peter Tidey; but I extracted a promise from him that he would not reveal my name to anybody on that day when he chased me into the railway •carriage going north, and my nickname, I suppose, suggested 'Rentoul' to him whsn he was suddenly called on to introduce me. I had grown tired of waiting for information from my uncle, and came right over here myself. I had heard my mother say my father was a Yorkshireman, and that's what led me to take train for Yorkshire, and by a miraculous fate to be taken to the very house I was seeking." "Then you.were in a hurry to bring your mission to an end because you loved Theodore Beeton, and wanted to accept him with a rlear conscience. Is that it, sister?" "Sister!" Tears leapt to the girl's eyes as she repeated the word slowly after him. Strangways went 011 hurriedly anxious to avoid a scene--"Now tell me, you love Theodore Beeton; don't deny it. lam sure of it." "Yes, I love him, I love him, I love him," she repeated defiantly, springing up and pacing the room. "And you intend to marry him?" "I did, but " "Oh, never mind Lady Violet; trust me to look after her." "Still you forget, you forget " Jack understood her. He had forgotten for the moment. "But when did your mother first know of her—her betrayal?" "She never knew, thank God, she never knew. She died believing my father to be a hard man of the world, and an unforgiving Puritan, and she accepted his reason for leaving her. She never knew she had less than poverty to hand down to her daughter. i only knew of it two days ago. Ricardo told me my father had a wife in England when he was supposed to have married my mother; but I was a nameless woman, and — and he dared to make love to me in sympathy. He toid me, too, that Theodore Beeton, the descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, would not marry a girl who " "He did? Then he is a slanderouliar. Theodore Beeton is a man not a punctilious cad. So this is the meaning of your little airs with Beeton. i 1 the goodness cf your heart you u.i - ted to give this man a reasonable use for breaking off with you without the painful process of telling him your story. Well, I have a say in the business now, and something has got to be done. But look here, why did you run away from 'The Gappe'?" " "I don't know ; I was confused and distracted at the discovery of my father's picture in your house, the story of his death, the attempt on your life; it was all so horribly overpowering. I had come over to England to face your father, to tell him of try mother's sufferings, to fling his locket in his face, and to tt 11 him that we had lived without him. It was a small and petty mission, you will think—a little thing to place before the attainment of one's dearest wish, the marriage with the man

PAUL URQTJHART.

[Published'sßy^ Special Arrangement.]

I love. Bui; you are a man; if you were a woman you would understand that matters which seem trivial to you are all important to us. "When I saw his picture you told me he had been cruelly murdered; then I was only just in time to prevent you being murdered. I had stolen out of the house to meet you myself and to tell you all. A suspicion of the hideous truth was forcing itself upon me when I found he had a son about my own age. But the sudden intervention of these men confused me more; I wanted to know more about them; and then in the dead of night I determined to go right home now that my own mission could not be accomplished. With a promise of further information my uncle lured me to his house in Hampstead Road. I went there determined at all cost to know the truth and to tell him I needed his services no longer. I thought my plan only was to leave England, and I had a confused idea that by so doing I might perhaps do the best turn to you. It was there that they told me the hideous secret of my life, and in a passion I told them that if a hair of your head weie injured, I would denounce them for their attempt to murder you on the moor. When they found I had watched them they locked the door; I tried to get oat of the house, and you know the rest. "What maddened them more than anything, I think, was that I had left the papers relating to my mother's supposed marriage and my own birth I at home, instead of carrying them about with me as I usually did. I put t.hem away when I found out there was no chance of my promiscuously running up against your father, and I refused to tell them where thay were, feeling sure they wanted them in order to get blackmail out of you." She laid the papers down on the table as she spoke, and Jack mechancially picked them up. As he spread them out a date suddenly caught his eye. He looked at it more carefully. "Is this the certificate of your mother's marriage?" he asked with reawakened interest. "Yes, and that is the certificate of my birth." "The slanderous blackguard! My mother died three years before this." A catch in the girl's throat choked the question she was about to ask. She clasped her hands, and trembling with mingled joy and fear she said at last —■ "You are not telling me this to comfort me only. You are not deceiving me; you are certain this is true." For answer Strangways loosened a locket that hung on his watchguarri. "My eld nurse gave me this and begged me always wear it," he said. "Look inside." With agitated fingers she opened the spring of the locket; there on the one side was a miniature of a beautiful woman not much over twenty, and on the other side two dates: one of the lady's birth, the other of her death. "To be sure, I might have known, if I had only had the sense to think," said Jack, "that there must be at least four years between us; but your story came upon me with such suddenness that I hadn't time to think, and I never dreamed that any man .could be so vile as to tell you this abominable lie. We are brother and sister beyond all doubt. Alice, and we have a common object in discovering the murderer of our father. There is a business matter, too, a bequest of his which will show you that he was not wholly unkind to you, but that can wait. There must be no secrets now between us. Have you any idea why they should want to murder my father? Do you think that when he was in America your uncle induced him to join in any secret society? Was he mixed up with anything of that sort?" "I have not the slightest idea. As I have told you, I never heard.from my uncle until a few months jf ago, and only of Conrad Ricardo as one of his disciples." "Then there is something to be discovered yet, and we must set about it. I wish I knew how they were getting 011 on that yacht," he added, drifting into another subject without any very apparent reason or sequence. "And so do I," she responded with heartfelt candour. "Then, by George, we'll find out for ourselves," said Jack, jumping up impetuously. "There's my steam yacht, the White Rose. Bless me, I haven't seen her yet. She was one of the few hobbies of the governor, who being a silent man liked the silent sea. I have inherited it like the rest of things, and I suppose in the strict rights of property you have a sort of share in it now. I wrote the skipper from 'The Gappe' only a few days ago, and told him to keep her going, retain the crew, and be ready for use whenever I wanted her. I thought perhaps " (To be continued.)