A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9126, 27 June 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

CHAPTER IX.—Continued. f Cecil ha:l never analysed her feelings for Felix, never tried to recall the memory of that first time they met- She was like a person magnetised. She responded to his will without question, and in a sense she was happy. But this change in Felix hurt to-day. She wondered, vaguely, if she had done some small thing that might have brought about this change. She was troubled. She did not Want to lose this kind, strong friend. She had been dwelling unconsciously a great deal on this visit of his today. Felix had played his role well all this time. He had been the friend always, never the lover; but his spell over the girl's innocent spirit had grown stronger and stronger notwithstanding. She was, after all, so very, very young, poor little Cecil, and older and wiser wo men than she had been bowed and bent beneath the fascination of this splendid creature, who knew not the meaning of heart, honour, or honesty. She had a wistful look in ' her lovely eyes, as Feljx came down. He had not been upstairs a long time. They spoke first of Mrs Brownlow. "I find her thoroughly weak. Her left lung is badly touched," he said. He stood by the fireside, a magnificent figure of a man. "I shall come down and see her again next week." Cecil thanked him as she gave him some tea. "But it is a long way to come," she said, in her gentle way, "and you work too hard already." "I would go very much farther than this for one word of greeting from your lips, Cecil,'-' Felix said unsteadily. Then he remembered that he was a moderately good actor, and he went through a little bit of dramatic effect. He put aside his tea, and drawing up a chair, seated himself in it, and bent forward to 1 stare steadily in the fire. "And j yet," he went ori doggedly, "I know | perfectly well that the wisest thing X could ever do would be never to C3me near you again. I have bean living in a dream ever since I saw you, Cecil. I have been conquered by the strongest power I have ever felt in my life. It was only yesterday I woke to the truth, and saw how wrong 1 was " He broke off effectively. Cecil, standing by the table, a tall, stately figure, in her clinging blajK gown, looked at him nervously. "I do not understand you," she feltered; and, indeed, she spoke the truth. "Why, what wrong have "

Felix got up suddenly, and stood bsside her. "Cecil," he aaid, changing his | VJice and speaking very gravely, "if j I continue to come here, I can do so i only as your affianced husband. When I I go away to-day, you must sit J quietly and ponder over this fact. | You must weigh it all in yodr mind, and you must not hesitate to act only for what your heart telld you is best. For me," he cried, with a theatrical touch of defiance, "I will bear all the world may say of or against me, if I may only have the priceless treasure .of your faith and love. If I may only know that you believe that, were you a poor, homeless, penniless girl, my love would be as deep, as 1 true as it is now, lam content. But you must think well on the future. You must do nothing rashly. You must never feel, in the days to come, that you have been coerced, that I took a wrong advantage of your youth and-—■" "Hush!" Cecil said. She lifted ]jer eyes to him now. "Listen," she went on gently. "I have no thought for what the world may say; I have no wish to go into this world, for I fear it will bo a hard, a cruel place; but the world has nothing to do with you—with my heart. You cam-j to me in a terrible time. You helped me. You gave me a comfort I had never known in my life before, and —and 1 took you into my heart from the very first. lam rich, you tell me, but I feel myself poor when I compare myself with you. You have my trust, my faith, my heart—l 1 feel I have no life in me except what belongs to you. You will not go away and leave me? Ido not want to sit and think over the future. I am not one that changes easily, and if I thought for a whole year I should only arrive at where 1 now stand." Felix bent his head and kissed her hands. He had a temporary touch of compunction as he listened to her beautiful words of faith and love, and once more the irritation that had assailed him earlier in the day came back to him. Why on earth must it be necessary for him to act so pitifully mean a part only just to obtain that which Cecil held eo lightly? He was relieved when he found himself: away from her, walking rapidly out in the autumn dusk. "I think I shall keep her in this place as much aa possible. I. can mold her to my slightest will. Thank Heaven, she ia not an ordinary young woman! Life with her should b.3 an easy matter. She wants so little, because she knows so little. Well, my future is cafe at last!—that is something I never thought would come to me. I must accept all the difficulties and annoyances of a marriage, when I realize what this particular marriage signifies to me." Any yet, his handsome face wore a decidedly overcast expression as he won; bade to his uncle's home. Triumph had come to him, but, as in many a case before his, it was a triumph tempered by many a doubts Ho had pushed things on at a headlong pace, and now that he had won'/ 1 he was giving himself time toreview the position, and it was not aJI golden, even though a large and safe bunk-account loomed first in the pic-

(To be continued)

By Eflie Adelaide Rowlands, Author o£ "Hugh Gretton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart,'' ''Bravo 1' irb; ra," "The Temptation of Mary liarr," "Selina'a Love Story," etc.

ture. Folix loved money and what money could bring. He had the strongest ambition for social advancement, but even above and beyond these ho loved his freedom; and now that the die was almost cast, now that the Lucklyne fortune lay safely under his grasping hand, he remembered, with a Pudcien pang of dismay, the big personal price he was about to pay for his fortune. It needs a thorough :om prehension of the workings of an intensely selfish, selfwilled mind to grasp what depths of regret and dismay Felix Bingham experienced when he saw his liberty, his old life of freedom, slip from him. He almost hesitated to proceed further, till he remembered that the days of his short respite with his creditors were coming slowly but surely to an end. He smothered a curse as he unlatched the gate of Sebastian Thorold's garden. "And to make things as bad as they can be, I suppose I shall have to face no end of bother with Kate," he said to himself doggedly; and letting the gate slam violently behind him, he went forward to play his usual role with the old man in whose life he held a closer place every day. CHAPTER XI. lIE SAW THE FOLLY OF HIS DREAM. Michael Everest had gone from the White Abbey with a heavy heart. The sudden death of Sir Charles Lacklyne signified a great loss to the young man. Materially, of course, he felt he should be able to support this loss, but the separation from his work at the White Abbey brought with it a pain that was certainly the deepest Michael had ever known. Up to. the time of Sir Charles' death, Michael had not permitted himself to pause and reflect upon the wonderful influence that association with Cecil, slight as it was, had brought into his life. He had been too happy, in one sense, to try to probe the cause of this, happiness. Michael was a dreamer, a man who lived in a world of his own imagination, who paw the poetry of life even amid the whirl of the machinery, and to whom the wind and rain, and even the falling o' ! a leaf from a tree, had a significance and a melody of their own. lie had been happy from the very first moment he had arrived at the White Abbey. The change from his former work and its unlovely environment was too great. He was not alarmed or annoyed by Sir Charles Lacklyne's brusk and, at times, rude manner; he saw an enthusiast in Cecil's strange father, i and, being an enthusiast himself Michael found a ready sympathy for ' his eccentric and not too easily i pleased employer. For the rest, he I had chanced to find favour with Sir j Charles, for Michael kriew his proI fesijioii thoroughly, and promised to I be of the greatest use to the master of the White Abbey, so few rude words had come in his way. It had not taken Michael very long tb grasp the various peculiarities of his new position, and ho I had given a little vain, yet natural sigh of envy as he had realised the vastness of the wealth that permitted this one man to indulge his idioayhcrasies for no purpose save for his owii gratification. The waste, too, pained him a good deal; for Michael had been reared in a school of the hardest poverty, and he knew 1 the valuu of a farthing to its full extent. Coming as he had done from avery big and methodical firm, where everything was regulated by the most mechanical precision, Michael had naturally found the arrangements in the workshop at the White Abbey both lax and .extravagant. But the charm of being in the heart of a beautiful country would have quickly lcjonciled Michael to matters far less satisfactory than those which he found attached to Jiis new engagement. He had a love for the country that could not b3 expressed j in words, and truly there was much I fcn gratify and illumine a mind such I as his in the surroundings of his new home. He had occupied one of the • little cotrnges Sir Charles had had built especially fpr his workmen, an in a sense Michael l'elt himself a king. His first meeting with Cejil was an experience that would never fade from his heart. He had been prepared for all sorts of eccentricities at the White Abbey, but he had not imagined that life there was to be made for him more beautiful than life had ever been made for mortal man before.