A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9134, 6 July 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

CHAPTER XIV. HELEN BROWNLOW'S ASTOUNDING DECLARATION. Michael Everest's tender anxiety about Cecil was well founded. The girl was really ill—ill in mind and body. She had caught a sharp cold in her strange journey to fog-bound London that memorable day, and with the knowledge of this illness the girl had seemed to awaken to the fact that she ailed, perhaps, more ir her heart and mind than in her body. Felix had been wise enough to work his will before Cecil had been thoroughly roused from the hazy dream in which she had lived since the night of her father's death, but even his astute mind had not grasped how disastrous for himself this awakening might prove to be. How Cecil had travelled from London back to the old welcome precincta of her home, she never could have told. All waa blurred out, and, in a sense, terrible. She had not known that she was nervous till this test was put to her; but there was not a nerve in her body that was not jarred—thrilled by the exciting, bewildering experience crammed into that hurried journey to London. Her heai swam and her limb 3 trembled as she finally was lifted by her maid from the railway-car at Winchester station and she lay back with closed eye 3 till her home was reached; then she seemed to regain consciousness with a gasp that might have been either pleasure or pain. And the days that followed were full of tedious, yet torturous, thought to the girl.

She had remained in her own room for one day, and so her changed manner and looks were not seen by the invalid woman, whose one realisation of sunshine was Cecil's presence in her room.

Felix did not pay his customary visit to the White Abbey that week; he purposely let some days elapse before he went down, but he wrote flvery day a long and most ecstati: letter to the girl who was now his wife. It would have surprised him a good deal if he had known that not one of those letters was opened by Cecil. The girl put them aside with a strange thrill of half-pained modesty, half-repugnance for the writer. With the awakening from the hypnotic trance that had held her in its sway these past few weeks, Cecil was turning the light of reason, of common sense, and of right-doing most mercilessly on her own conduct. She was aghast to realise how in so short a time she had transferred all the kingdom, of her life from her own keeping to that of another, and one who, with a pang of regretful pride she remembered was in truth a stranger to her.

The old influence of her dead father was at work in Cecil just now, and scorched her as she put before herself deliberately the work of the past few weeks. She now saw shrewdly enough how her father would have judged this. Felix's personality faded from her as though it had been a shadow, and she sought, with a heart that thrilled and throbbed feverishly, for the cause of this most strange abnegation on har part of that independence of will and pride which Charles Lacklyne had always encouraged so strongly, though he set so equally strong a barrier on her liberty. .' Cecil was too young to arrive at anything like the truth but she was not too young to feel an aversion for the power Felix had obtained over her, and doubly so for the knowledge that she had parted so easily with her freedom. The day in London could never be recalled enough to know that some ceremony had passed in which Felix and she had figured, and which bartered her independence forever. Perhaps, mingling in with all these thoughts, there came the biting memory of that vehement dislike which Helen Brownlov/ had expressed o sharply for Doctor Bingham, the firsday he had visited her. Cecil, after one day of solitude in her own room, had put aside her illness and taken up her usual tasks. She had been grateful that Mrs Brownjow made no comment on her absence. Felix had strictly enjoined on her that she must not tell the invalid of her journey to London. "She may imagine something will happen to you on this your first venture outside the White Abbey. Therefore, as it is essential to keep her mind at rest make some excuse, and tell her the truth afterward," he had said. And Cecil had obeyed him implicitly. She was beginning to chafe now at the mere memory of her obedience. But though the sick woman made no comment to the girl, her heart was fiercely gripped as she looked on Cecil in ;hese day?, and knew that suffering of some sort was beginning to eat its way into the girl's heart, possibly to blight her future happiness. She lay with closed eyes, praying and pondering how best to act. Once she asked curtly enough for Doctor Thorold. "I should like to see him," she said; for ahc determined suddenly to opon her heart to rbat kind old man, even though what she had to say must give him pain. But Doctor Thorold was too ill to leave his house. He wrote this most regretfully to Cecil:— "It costs me more than I can tell you, my deir little Cecil, to have to refuse to obey you, but, in truth, I cannot stir an inch. 1 have rarely had such a bad attack. I have, however, sent a telegram to Felix; I want to see him myself, and I am sure he would hiu'R bee>n down this' week to visit Mrs Brownlow, had not business detained him. I shall be anxious to have his verdict of your invalid." Cecil tcld this news very quietly to

By Effle Adelaide Rowlands, Author o£ "Hugh Grotton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart,'' •'Bravo •: Bavtwra," "The Temptation oc Mary Barr," "Selina's Love Story," etc.

Helen Brownlow, who merely nodded. "The young man will do as well," was all she said; and she waited in grim silence for Felix to come. "It is the hour to speak the truth," she said to herself, as she lay waiting; and her pale face grew still palt.r. "I had hoped to carry this with me to the grave, but to save her I must speak. If things are as I fear they are, I may stand between her and misery, for my fine bird will soon fly away when he knows how slight a barrier shuts Cecil away from what he will call absolute poverty. God bless her, poor child! Will she blame me if by speaking, I do her this harm? Will she turn from me? Will she ever understand my reason —how, by my love and everlasting gratitude to her, I v/ould rather see her lying peacefully in her grave than know that she had given her life into the hands of that callous, smiling villain, who belongs to that class I know, alas! too well —the class of men. who live to blacken the beauty of humanity, to make the world as evil as it is." ' ******

Cecil was somewhere far out in j the woods when Felix arrived in answer to his uncle's telegram. His brows met in a frown as he inquired for her, and learned that she was not in the house. "What is it?" he muttered to himself, but his frown did not last long. After all, a silly girl's words were nothing to him now; he had won triumphantly. As he stood alone a moment, his eyes went complacently over the luxurious surroundings that prevailed at the White Abbey. "It was lucky Cecil happened to be the only child, and that the laws of primogeniture, no matter of what sex the eldest born is observed in the Lacklyne family. It would have been deucedly unpleasant to have seen this place paas to the present owner of the title. I shall make a good many alterations yet," was his complacent thought. He passed leisurely up the stairs. "By Jove!" his thoughts ran on, "my luckly star was well over my head that September night when I came down here to see Uncle Sebastian and go to the Minchester ball. Who could have imagined Charles Lacklyne's death would have brought me such luck? There is a lot in chance, after (all. I, for one, shal never deny its in the future." He wore his usual smiling, handsome air s.s he approached Helen Brownlow's bedside. The sick woman was sitting up, supported by pillows She looked terribly weak, but her eyes, meeting Felix, were full of fire and a beauty that amazed him. He drew up a chair, and began to put some conventional questions to her, when she lifted her hand. Her instinctive contempt for this man was greater to-day than it had ever been. "I have no answer to give you about myself," she said, in a voice that was harsh and strained. "Instead, I have some questions to put to you." The woman looked at him, and something in his triumphant expression made her heart cold with sudden fear. What if she were about to tear aside the veil of truth from the past, to risk meeting Cecil's sad, reproachful eyes, for nothing? She half-hesi-tated, then a burning desire to sift the meaning of this man's intention j forced her on. (To be Continued).