A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9123, 24 June 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

CHAPTER Vlll.—Continued. "If your mother will come, too, I shall always be glad to see her," Cecil said; and then she left him and went slowly up the stairs to spend the remainder of the day in the room with the woman who now claimed from her the thought and devotion of a daughtex*. She sighed a a little heavily as she went; the story she had to hear from these strange lips wounded so deeply. Down below in the hall Michael Everest caught the faint sound of that sigh. He looked upward with tears in his eyes. "Oh, my dear love, if I could only stand between you and all sorrow! If I could only take all your sighs! But my place is always outside. I know that you suffer, but I cannot speak; and f=o it will be till my life s end, for I am not one who could ever learn to forget." '' CHAPTER IX. AN INTENDED BRIDE HAS HER WAY. Cecil had told Paul Darnley she should'make many changes in the White Abbey, and these changes the girl set about arranging swiftly in the days immediately following her father's funeral. It cost her some sharp pangs to do away with the numerous contrivances that had ousted the more conventional forms of comfort from the rooms, but to let them remain on in their perpetually useless condition wasiimpossible. The motive power that had set the machinery going was stilled forever, and Cecil had a feeling that she would be more comfortable if she siw all that appertained to the strange, familiar past swept utterly away. She had another feeling upon her, too—a de3ire to make the big h juse comfortable and warm for the companion who was to share it witfi her; for it had not needei Doctor Thorold's professional opinion for the j girl to realise that the woman she had welcomed so generously into her life was but a'physical wreck. They had spoken but a very few words since that one eventful moment when Cecil ; be ruling ov?r the j woman 3* had I Raised hsr arid calle:l ker | An attack of acute nervous pros.s, • tion had succeeded the excitement j and passion that had thrilled the j stranger from the moment she had, set foot in the White Abbey. She ( had only strength to whisper out her j wishes for the future. I "You have given me all I asked, for. I want nothing more—only to J be near you; to have some resting-1 place till my end comes," she had said feebly, to Cecil. "The end will not be long coming. I knew that when I started on this journey. If I could have forseen what lay before me, perhaps I should never have come, never have brought this dark shadow j upon you. I thought of myself, of my revenge; and after all, his punishment was not given into my hands." With difficulty she had entreated Cecil to let her remain unknown, unacknowledged. "You do not know the world as I do," she had murmured, with a wan smile. "It must be my duty to stand between you and all trouble. You must shut away the truth forever. Call me a kinswoman of your mother's family. I will keep a name that belongs to that family that has no shame upon it. I have done you harm enough," the poor woman added hoarsely, after a moment's silence. "You should hate me instead of treating me tenderly." She had paused again before she asked Cecil in a very low voice a que3tion that seemed to haunt and sting/her: "You loved him very much? He was a good father to you?" Cecil had answered her simply: "Yes, he was good to me; and I loved him, not because he loved me, but because it is my nature to love. He was a strange man." The girl shrank, nevertheless, from discussing her father, and it had needed very little to let the other grasp this. There was silence between them on this subject. Whatever the pitiful depths and truths of the past might be, they were hidden from Cecil. She occupied herself in tending the sick woman, in surrounding her witli comfort. It was an occupation that developed her womanliness. Already a staff of female servants had been installed in the White Abbey. Doctor Thorold's housekeeper had been equal to toe task. The old building had a new aspect under the new regeime, being brightened and garnished and made habitable as other houses were. The excitement cf these alterations kept Cc;il from thinking to keenly, from realising to the full ail that had como tj pass her. Had her mind teen freed, too, from the strange thrilling remembrance of Felix Bingham, most surely the girl must have passed through days and hours of .sharpest mental trouble, tor there was so much tlat could hurt a nature like hers in all that had happened; but Felix kept hir thrall about her as completely as though he held her in actual bonds. It was he, who, acting on her behalf, despatched from London the hundred and one things to at were being use! to turn the former barnlike White Abbey into a luxurious and comfortable home. He wsote to the girl daily. "You are to tell me your slightest wish," he always wrote. "Let me serve you, no matter how." In reply, Cecil sent him an occassional, note of a few timid words, either giving him thanks or approv-

By Effie Adelaide Rowlands? Author of "Hugh Gretton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart,'' -'Bravo Barbara," "Tiro Temptation of Mary Ban'," "Selinas Love Story," etc.

ing of his suggestion; for Felix had flunjt himself heart and soul into the question of Cecil's new arrangements. It was from his uncle that he had first gathered all that the girl'determine.! to do, and the information was the ground word on which he based iris pi aba for the immediate future. "i\l,s.i Lacklyno will require you to help tier in these things, and you had better turn to me," he said to his uncle on the day of his departure from (Winchester. "I am a little old-fashioned in executing commissions," Sebastian Thorold had said to this, with a faint smile, "so, if there is anything I want done, I shall remember you, my dear boy." And so, without knowing exactly how it had come about, Doctor Thorold was speedily aware that it was his nephew who was responsible for the despatching down, day after day, of pieces of furniture, soft carpeis and rugs, cozy chairs, and countless small articles, which Cecil scattered through her big rooms, making an altogether new atmosphere in her old home. "You must not let my boy be too reckless," Doctor Thorold said now occasionally to Cecil. Secretly he approved heartily of his boy's tactics for Cecil was kept perpetually busy, and there was no time for morbid, sorrowful thought. Quite to himself, however, the old doctor, while acknowledging the good in these proceedings, could not but feel a pang as he conjured up the White Abbey as he had known it these many years, and brought back th» picture of the energetic, the eccentric, undoubtedly clever being who had dominated it. It cost Sebastian Thorold a grer.t effort to realise that this page of life I was torn out, leaving nothing behind —barely a few rough edges. Possibly the bond that jhad drawn this good old man so closely to one who could never, by courtesy, even, have been called a similarly good individual, ( had been based on the sympathy they . both had in the technics and progress of science. Ee that as it I might, Sebastian Thorold had sincerely cared for Charles Lacklyne, and he mourned him truly. He had, as we know, found himself drawn into a belief that much, if not all, of the story the woman had told him was truth, and though his knowledge of Lacklyne's fierce, and at times brutal, nature helped to corroborate the charge of cruelty against him, his heart turned more to the JcU ijt the dead tkai'i the living. He had not exerted any strong influence with Cecil to work her away | from her derision to give a homs to the woman who had brought such a strange tragedy into her life, because he had felt that the girl's decision was not one to be easily moved. Duty, apart from his own broad-minded humanity, told him the girl was right; but he sometimes fell into sorrowful thoughts as to how the present arrangement of life at the White Abbey would have stung and hurt its late master. He was very careful to keep all signs of his own inmost feelings entirely concealed, even when Felix had expressed an opinion that Miss Lacklyne should never have been permitted to go ku far as to acknowledge one who was so utterly a stranger to her. "Besides, from what you tell me," Felix said sharply, "it is evident this woman doas not stick to the truth, uncle. What did she mean by announcing herself in the first instance as prisoner from Cleveiands, when now she tells you she came direct from the other side of the world? What purpose did she serve by telling such a falsehood? And if she tells one so shamelessly, why should not the whole of her strange story be a tissue of lies? I am afraid, Uncle Sebastian, I do not share your faith in this matter." (To be continued).