A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9111, 10 June 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

CHAPTER 11. —Continued. , She went straight to him, and clung to him with both her hands. "Father, dear father, what i,; it? What has happened? " She looked eagerly at Paul Darnley as she spoke; but Damley, with a face as white as death, avoided her j eyes. He was pouring out some brandy, and was putting it to the ashen lips of the man in the chair. "Father, father! " Cecil whispered. A terrible fear was beginning to possess her —a feeling she could never have described. She took the brandy from Darnley's hands, and moistened the lips of the stricken man. The woman had ceased speaking. She had resumed her cloak, as if about to depart, and drawn it tightly about her, while she stood watching the girl with an extraordinary expression on her lips. Desparingly, wildly, Cecil clung to. her father, and implored him to speak, but it seemed as though words would never pass Charles Lacklyne's lips again. He sat breathing stertorously, his eyes staring in that distorted fashion before him, as though his sight were magnetized by some horrible vision. Cecil's voice ceased after a It was as though a century had passed since she entered the room, and yet the clock's hand 3 had only ticked on two minutes. She rose, still keaping her lingers clasped round her father's cold, heavy hand. "Mr Darnley, help me!" she said, half-wildly. "Father is ill. We must send for a doctor. a servant go fcr Doctsr Thorold. He will come; he will understand." Then she put out her hand to Paul. "Be merciful tome; tell me—what" —she had to fight tha words—"what does this woman want? Why does she stay? Does she not see my—my father is very ill" Paul Darnley took her hand, but it was not his voice that ajnswered her; j it was the voice of the* woman be hind, and at the sound Cecil turned and faced her for the first time. "I am here because 1 have a right to bo here —because it is mv proper place," the voice declared sullenly. Cecil's eyes scrutinised the i'ace before her. It might once have been handsome; it was now only repulsive; the skin roughened and lined, the eyes violent. About the head a scaif was swathed instead of a bonnet. At first contact with Cecil's eyes, the woman laughed a shrill laugh, ■> and jerked the scarf from her head. Her hair was cropped close; she had a strange air. '/ Cecil felt an oppression steal over her as though she were about to suffocate. The words she heard did not hurt her so much as this woman' 3 face. She turned to Paul with a shudder. "I— do not understand," she said. The woman laughed again. "You want plain word 3, I see. ¥ou Want to know who I am. It is easily answered. lam a discharged prisuner from Clevelands. lam your father's wife! I am your mother, and I have come to take my place'in your home!" To Paul Darnley it was as though the torture in the girl's heart passed frjm her eyes into his. An instant he, too, felt suffocated; then his sgn;es were alert again, and, as Cecil reeled and fell forward, he was in time to catch her before she fell to ' the ground insensible. CHAPTER 111. AN ARTFUL YOUNG DOCTOR. ' A more delightful, tender-hearted old man did" not exist in all the worli than Doctor Sebastian Thorokl. People mealing him for the first time generally credited him with being a shy, fcirrlple creature, with shabby clothes, limited intelligence, ami ; o sense of any personal importance. It was with an air of incredulous astonishment that such people generally [ received the intelligence that th s shy, quaint-mannered old man, with | his snuff-box and his lack of dignity, was one and the same with that man who by force of his intellect had made for himself a name in beneficicnt science that would never wholly die out; his whole life seemed such a contradiction to the fame which, in tic world of knowledge, circled him about. His house on the outskirts of this little Weslshire town, was nothing more nor less than a cottage; his servants consisted of an old couple, who had lived with him for more years than ha could count, and who were dear to him, not merely because they knew and understood him almost, as -well as he knew and understood himself, but because they had been nssocia!e:Hvith the one period of his life that stood out in his memory as the pjriod of hi 3 golden earthly happiness —the period when his dead wife had been with him, a veritable living ungel. . ' No children had been born to Sebastian, and Anhe Thorokl. All U e Jove they Would have lavished on their own- children, had they come, was poured out on an orphan boy, an only child of Mrs Thorold's twinsister, who had died in giving him birth. Frum.Anr.e Thorokl and her husband, this lad, Felix Bingham, had re eived the care, the tender affection of parents. The meaning of hid orphanage had never conie to him; in truth, he had had a childhood of rare happiness such as is rarely given to young creatures; and when death /snatched his aunt away, Felix Bingham lost his mother for the first time. He was taught to revere his own mother's memory as he grew up,

By Effie Adelaide lowlands, Author Jof "Hugh' Gretton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart," -Brave Barbara," "The Temptation of Maiy Er.rr," "Selina's Lovo Story," etc.

but mention of his . father was seldom made. It was not until Felix attained to boyhood that he began to question about hn father, and though he was not satisfied with the answers his uncle gave him, in his shy, shrinking way, Felix, with premature shrewdness, told himself he would do better to leave the matter aione. It was evident to the boy that his father's record had scarcely been a fair one, ard already, at that early age, he had grasped the fact that being the nephuw of his celebrated unclj was a far better position for him than proclaiming himself the son of some unknown man. This quality of shrewdness developed in Felix as the years of his boyhood sped away, along with other qualities which would have occasioned great pain to the old savant could he have known of their existence. Doctor Thorold, however, knew nothing of Felix save what was good and admirable; it "'as enough fur him that the boy was the joy of his existsence. He was inordinately proud ot Felix, and, truly, his nephew was a youth to inspire affection. The handsome, looks he possessed were the heritage of his father, and were destined to play an important part in Felix's future life and success, for he was an exceedingly handsome young man. He stood as tall, and was as splendidly built and had the«same colouring as one of the vikings of old. Physically, there was not a flaw to be found in Felix Bingham, and his nature was to all seeming as sunny, as beautiful as his face, with the splendid eyes, the clear-cut features, and the healthy tan of his skin. It had been his dead aunt's wish that he should enter the army, but Felix had put aside this wish. "It is an idle life," he had said to his uncle, to be always dressed up in gold lace and scarlet, and to be paraded about like a doll. I don't think I could endure it, Uncle Sebastian." And, of course, he got his way. As a matter of fact, it was not the idle part uf the army that struck the young man as objectionable; it was just the contrary. No living creature abhorred rules and regulations more than young Mr Bingham; to have to go through the perpetual drill and routine of a military life would have been purgatory. He preferred a life of absolute independence. His brains—and he had more than his share of them—turned far more quickly to schemes of making a career for himself, of chance, of pleasure, of speculation—anything, in fact, but steady, hard work. He had scrambled somehow through his university training, being, however, a favoured "man" at college, because of his strength and skill in athletics, and passing'out eventually with a champion record, as far as sport went, but with little else. Nevertheless, a year or so later, he had managed to pass a fairly decent examination in medicine, had officiated as interne in a hospital, and was qualified to practise as a doctor. There were few subjects, as a matter of fact, Felix could not have tackled had he given himself a full 'chance; but this he would never do. He turned to medicine and accomplished what he did merely to keep himself in good favour with his uncle. He had put it in his head from his earliest boyhood that Sebastian Thorold was not merely a wealthy, but a very wealthy man, and to obtain that wealth at some not far future date was the motive that actuated all Felix's thoughts. He knew he stood a good chance of being heir to all Doctor Thorold might leave, but at the same time he was well aware that the old man had other kin quite as near by relationship if not so dear to himself; and thus it was that the memory of these other kinsfolk stimulated the young man to deeds of what he himself railed hard labour, and brought about a stale of things which gladdened the heart of the good old man, who worshipped Felix so deeply and so unwisely. A (To be continued).