A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9109, 8 June 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

By Effie Adelaide Rowlands, Author '.of "Hugh Gretton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart," "Brave Barbara," "The Temptation of Mary Enrr," '-Solina's Love Story," etc.

CHAPTER I.—Continued.

Darnley made some laughing reply, but his eyes had followed Cecil. Left to herself, the girl had walked to one of the open doorways, and was leaning against it half-wearily, gazin* out into the evening dusk. Wi'.h tne light, falling on her thick goldentouched curls, and bringing out the colour and quaintness of her clothes, she might have passed for a Bosal'nd strayed by chance from the woods of Arden into this very matter-of-fact home of machinery. "I must have a quiet hour's chat with Lacklyne before I go," Paul Darnley said to himself decisively. "Tois was all very well; a pretty little farce enough when Cecil was a child, but now she is a child no longer, and Lacklyne, though he may subdue and even alter hia course, cannot deny her womanhood. It is time matters were altered. The girl herself begins to crave for those things that are her rights. She is no weak, ordinary woman. Her education has made her strong enough to face the whole world without flinching. When i the moment comes that she demands her freedom, Lacklyne may send his life in inventing something to stop her; but her freedom she will have, all the same—on that point he may be very sure." Cecil stood looking out across the liwn to where the trees made a path o- darkness against the moonless sky. She heard her father declaiming, and j explaining and growing enthusiastic i about his ideas, in a misty sort of i fashion. Mr Darnely's arrival this time had disturbed the girl strangely. It was some months now since any guest had been to the White Abbey. | Cecil seemed to have grown a great , deal in these months; she was daily} conscious of a change in herself. , The contact now with someone from that outer world enforced this feeling. | She had no nnuvaise honte in meet' j insc Paul Dandey, or a->y other visitor ( fro.n that big mysterioub world that was so resolutely shut away from her. I Her isolation from all the other mem-b3i-3 of her own sex—for, save for : thj old Italian woman, tnere was not • a female in Sir Charles' establishment—had kept her mii.d free of thone little vanities, or prud.rLv, that come to most grls. She ki.ew, of course, it was not customary for women or girls to be garbed ad she was, but this did not trjuble Cecil; in fast, thought of her persjnulily had not, as yet, reached her. Theie was not a mirror .to be found within the walls of the White Abbey, and Cecil had, therefcrj, not the faintest notion of how she looked, or if her face were fair, or ugly. i It was not these things that trouble J her; it was the matter introduced into her brain by her studies and by herbaloved books—for Sir Charles set no limit on '* her reading—that was beginning to stir itself now into , a thousand eager questions. Life, with;all its vague mysteries, its possible'joys and sorrows, surrounded by her as a dream; in imagination she could hear the- voices, the tread of the feet of thR busy world passing ever beyond the confines of her home. ' The soft soughing of the branches in the night wind brought messages of hearts, and loves, and kingdoms to the fanciful brain of the girl, and touched her with an eager yearning to break through the coils of the present limited life, and come/in direct contact with that world about which she had reud so much, and knew so little. It would never bo possible ftr her to speak out these longings to her father. Already Cecil had gauged her father's nature most accurately, she knew him to be a man of strong prejudice and passion. She delighted in his ingenuity and general knowledge, but there was no sympathy between thorn. She had grown up from babyhood without an endearing word from her father; her infancy had been shorn of all those little tokens of affection which arj so esse - tial, because they are so natural. I-It-r old nurse, Nini, it was true, lavished a wealth of love on the girl, and probably it was from contrast with this strong and Vue affection th it Cecil, as she grew out of chikrnod, realised how mud) was lacking between herself and her father. Although she had never set fo< t beyond the tall, gray stone walls tlut bordered tho domain of the White Abbey, Cecil's ears were used to the a;ories of poverty, sickness End lnrrfaliip that were in the wintei-.ime only too pre\alent in the village homes scattered about outside her own grand empty homo; and she was wearily used, t:x), to the scenes of violence and abuse that woidd inevitably follow on any appeal t.) her father from those in distress. While money wps s:aUcrtd and wasced in every direction for the furtherance of his latest craze, or toy, there were people at hia very door starving for the actual necessities of life. Cezil had been the first to h> • f atl e■ on ; uch a matter as thi , wh'3ll her little mind had grasped t..0 full signifiicai ca of what jna lizard, but she never repeated the effort, f;r she had been but a more child a; the time, and her father's rage witn her had only temporarily frightened her. . The lenson of humin ty had come to her by degrees; it was her own nutura Hint tought to un lerstand this lesson, and her books helped her. Her father stinted nothing in her education, but he would not let her be" o-iven any religion. Aided by poor, imornnt. devout old Nini, however, the child found a religion for herself, and not a sweeter, truer, purer heart, could be" found in all the world than the heart of Charle3 Lacklyne's daughter. Could she have been free tp exercise the charity, that wa3 so

dominant a part of her nature, Cecil might have found happiness in her lot, solitary and confined as it was, to the end of her clays; but there was so little she could do. Money she had never had; she scarcely knew what its worth was; she could give, therefore, no material help to the many who, Nini told her, had such need of it; but yet the heart of the girl found some solace. She lavished love on the animals scattered about the place; she had ever a soft word and inquiry for the servants, who were in constant disgrace with her father. Quite recently there had been an accident in the workshop. Michael Everest, the young Englishman, had slipped against some of the machinery, and had lacerated his hand severely, and Cecil had bathed and dressed the wounds with as much tenderness a* though the man had been her brother. She had a trick of standing between her father's work-people and his anger whenever it whs feasible. She had outgrown her fear of him, but with the oirth of courage had come a strong pride that prevented her from asking any favors of her father. She shrank, too, from rousing him to that furious mood when his reason seemed to desert him altogether. Cecil always felt humiliated when her father lapsed into one of these fits of passion and screaming invective. She knew he was by this time regarded as being mad, not only by those who served him, but by" all who dwelt near. But Cecil did not consider her father mad. She found him a man wholly unrestrained, a nature hard and selfishly cruel to begin with, and made harder still by self-indulgmeut. j Into her father's past the girl had j naver ventured or desired to inquire; her mind was always set out on the future. She was as one groping in a dark cul de-sac, yet hope and imagination were always with her, and her brain was full of pictures, t both in her dreams by day and in her ! sleeping fancies. i She wa? fast lapsing into one of these hazy moments as she stood by ; the doorway, hearing her father's voice explaining enthusiastically to Paul Darnley his latest exploits and triumphs. She felt inexpressibly tired to-night, and hope did pot flutter eagerly in her breast. The beat and noise from the workshop fatigued her, too. She looked back to where Mr Darnley and her father stood together. They had no need of her; she would go out into the silence of the m?ht, and walk for a while under her favourite trees. She paused as she was passing, and spoke to the young working man near her. i "Your hand is better to-night, j Michael'?' she asked. '* Michael Everest's face lighted up ! at the sound of her voice. "There is hardly any pain now, Miss Cecil," he answered. (To be continued).