ONE IMPASSIONED HOUR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9045, 21 March 1908, Page 2

ONE IMPASSIONED HOUR.

By OWEN MASTERS.

horof "Nina's Repentance," " Clyda's Love Dream," " Her Soldier Lover," " For Love of Marjorie," " The Mystery of Woodcroft," etc.

CHAPTER XV. BY THE «E/EN-FIFTEEN. "The rubbish hinted at by the servants, ami—others. L'\;rget it, Miriam—poor Miriam." iiis voice bocamv sort ;.nd gent s k', and he caressed her lia'r. "Your mind is filled with fancies—unreal, distorted. These dark days will not always be with u;-;—we may have not reached the darkest of them yet imt my faith in a bountiful and glorious future is illimitable. Why should we not help one another, Miriam? I love you, and you need not b<> ashamed of your love for me,, JJo you think I cannot read it in those tellalle eyes?"

he likes?" growled Parker. "Oh, certainly. You have a fine view of the forked roads from this window. The Priory people and the Red House people can neither come nor go without being" seen." He paid no heed to Parker's rising anger. "And that is just why lam here, Parker. Miss Linley went up to Birmingham to-day, and she is due home by the seven-fifteen. The fool of a coachman has harnessed the big roan—l forget what tbey call him—

"Kiilcoy, air." ' "That's the brute in front of the brougham. . 1 knew enough about horses to tell me that Killcoy, with his wicked, bared teeth his rolling eyes, and flattened ears, is unsafe in a thunder-storm. I intended going en to the station, but have a bad ankle, and could get no farther. I only'hope that Miss Linley will have the good sense to wait until the storm is over. By George! that was a stunner!"

"Oh, Allan—Allan !" she sobbed. He sat down besids her, and drew her head to his shoulder, and she murmured his name again and again

"Our cup of bitterness is not without its sweet*," he thought. "And in my heart I know — " He fought back the words which were shaping tighter. It was lute in the day when Allan Berrington rode homeward, and it was early next morning when he again galloped to the Priory. This sort of thing went on for three whole days, and Castle Stanford woke up. Allan's prolonged visits to the Priory provoked a great deal of discussion. The smug villas, the street corners, .and the Caslle Stanford Arms had some remarkable thinga to say about it.

Both men turned from the window, half-blinded by a blaze of ligntning. It illumined the whole \illage, and flooded the smoking-room with a light like molten steel at white heat. An explosion followed immediately upon it, and left the men wondering if the house was toppling about their ears.

They looked at each other in silence for a minute. The bar-parlour customers were crowded in the door way, very badly frightened. "There's a carriage of some sort coming up from the station," said Tom. "I can hear the wheels." The vehicle swung round the corner, and pulled up at the inn. It was the' station hack, and contained one passenger, who was peering through the rain. "Why are you stopping here?" a woman's clear voice demanded. "This is not the priory." "No, ma'am, but I ain't going a stop farther in this storm," retorted the driver. "If you step out they'll make you comfortable for half-an-hour here, and I'll put my horse under shelter."

"We are positively scandalised," said the villas severely. "Fancy love-making and courtship in such appalling circumstances! Positively no good can come of it." The street corners shrugged their shoulders, and whispered behind their hands; while the Castle Stanlord Arms declared that young Berrington wa3 a cold-blooded, unnatural .scoundrel.

But Tom Parker was loyal to the .core. He fancied that he had a prescriptive right to say just what he pleased, but when others took •up his cue his brow became black •as night. "Don't you forget, gentleman," he said, in palliation, ''that Mr Allan is a lawyer, and nobody but a lawyer can beat a Chinese for cunning. You may depend he's playing some game, too deep for us to see all at once." "I've seen his arm round Miss Eastwood's waist," smirked an under-gardener, who had recently been discharged. There was a chorus of fat chuckles, but Tom Parker igmred it.

"I shall do nothing of the kind! I won't be gaped at by a crowd of village louts. The storm is rolling away. Go back to your seat at once, and you shall have a sovereign when I get to the Priory " The driver glanced at the smokingroom window and made a grimace; then he looked upward. The big clouds were certainly rolling away in the grip of a savage nor'-wester. At that precise moment Miss Linley's brougham swept round the bend from the railway-station, and Upton Warren hurried outside. Killcoy was well in hand, and he breathed a sigh of satisfaction. He was turning back into the inn, |when, to his surprise,* the brougham came to a halt, aid he saw that Miss Linley was beckoning to him. Off went his hat, and he limped to the carriage window, his eyes filled with pleasurable expectancy. "lam sorry to trouble, you, Mr Warren, but do you think it safe for one to trust oneself with Killcoy?" "Has he been showing temper, Miss Linley?" "Abominably." Then her eyes kindled, and she whispered; "I want you to take stock of the laly in the station hack. I am sure it is the new mistress of the Priory, from the description Mr Berrington gave me of her."

"That only conveys one idea to a miiidofyoui" limited intelligence," he said, fixing his savage eye upon the offending gardener. "You've raising' turnips so long that you are no better than a human turnip yourself, with a big slice of sneaking spy leavened in!" ""Hear, hear!" chimed in the tradesmen, who ornamented the parlour every evening, and resented the appearance of a gardener therein. "As I am ; saying, gentlemen," Parker went on. "Mr Allan is a lawyer, and he knows what he's doing. There's the detective chap chucked up the job—he told me so himself; aid Mr Allan is going to carry it through. Not but what I'd give him something worse than my tongue," he added, as an afterthought, "if he went sparking the most beautiful young woman in England, without tmy real intentions. That would.be worse than the other job, to my thinking." The audience looked grave, and slaked its thirst.

"Too late," he answered dryly; "she is off; but I have her profile photographed in my brain, and I think that we have met before. If you are afraid of Killcoy's bad manners, JVliss Linley, I will ride beside the coachman."

"But he's a lawyer, and he knows what he's doing," the butcher remarked sagely. "Of course he does," Tom said hastily. "And we've talked quite enough about our betters." The smoking-room bell rang, and he left the bar to see v/ho was there and what was wanted.

"Nonsense! lam not afraid. I observe you are s'ill lame, Mr Warren. If you ride at all it must be inside the brougham. The rain is still falling heavily. Come!" "If you insist." His pale face lit up with a smile, as he took a seat opposite to her. She was regarding him rather quizzically, and he looked away. (To b2 continued.)

"Good evening. Mr Warren," he said cheerily. "Talk about angels, and you hear the rustling of their wings. It wasn't five minutes ago that your name was on my tongue." "Indeed!" the detective answered languidly. "Very warm, is it not? "This humidity and peculiar stillness •generally precedes a storm. Look at the setting sun yonder. Like a globe ■of molten gold, 3urruunded by radi.ating lances of dazzling silver."

"Where?" asked Tom. "What's your drink, sir? Same as usual?" Upton Warren nodded, adding: "And one of your best cigars. .By Jove, I'm booked here for >a time!" He went over to the window, and gazed up at the fa&t blackening sky. Giant clouds were converging from every point of the compass, and rolling upward 1 and onward like the waves of an angry sea, until the gold of the sun and the blue nf the sky were hidden by an inky pall. Great drops of rain hissed against the walls, and the windows, followed by savage little puffs of wind and the low mutterings of thunder in the echoing hills. Upton Warren seemed ill at ease. He looked at his watch, passed a finger-tip along a well-worn line in the middle of the maze of figures on a railway time-sheet, and on:e again turned to the window. "The seven-fifteen is just due, ano the storm is due, too!" he muttered. "I hope Miss Linley won't venture through it. That roan horse is a treacherous beast."

He lighted his cigar, and watched the falling-rain. Now and then the black clouds were driven, an-1 dazzling lightning leaped forth, many tonirued and lurid. "Mr Allan only got home just in time," remarked Torn Parker, walking into the smoking-room. "He rode past about three minutes before you carne in, sir." "From the Priory, of course?" "I suppose Mr Allan can go where