A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9138, 14 July 1908, Page 2

A HEART'S TRIUMPH.

CHAPTER XVll.—Continued. All the money she possessed was that which she had found in thn dead woman's hag, and this Cecil took, feeling that there was a pleasure in ba.ng beholden to one who would have lavished a world of wealth upon her, had it been possible. In nil thare were not u hundred pounds, but to* Cecil this seemed a great deal of money; and when Nini changed their fortune into francs, and declared they had enough to live upon in her beloved Italy for years, Cecil was comforted, and believed her. To escape from the White Abbey quietly, and without letting the lawyers know of her action, was Cecil's keenest thought. It was not easy, lor she was like a child in her knowledge of the workings of every day life outside the confines of her old home, and Nini was no help to her in this. Since the day, some seventeen years or so before, that she hud been brought to the White Abbey, holding Cecil in her arms, the old Italian woman had never been outside the walls of the grounds and gardens. Cecil had gently questioned Nini as to her knowledge of the past, but Mini had come into the Lacklyne household when only Sir Charles and his child composed it. She told Cecil in her simple way that she had shed tears over the little motherless creatures in deep black that she was hired to nurse.

Burdened, therefore, with the care of Nini, it was an anxious time for Cecil when she finally crept away from the White Abbey. The journey to Minshester station was accomplished, however, with far greater success than she had hoped. Most of the servants had been dismissed, and the one or two who remained obeyed orders unquestioningly. It hurt Cecil sharply to go away and leave no word for Sebastian Thorold, but the mere thought of him brought back the dread of Felix, the fear of seeing him, of coming in contact with the false, smiling, splendid man to whom for a few brief weeks she had clung with a faith and an abnegation which were amazing to her to remember.

From the thought of Paul Darnley she turned too. She felt truly that Paul would side strongly with the lawyers, and with him it would be harder to fight, especially as she could never let him guess the strong • est reason she had for exiling herself from all she had imagined was hers. But when Minchester was left behind and London waa reached, that strange, mad, whirl'rig circle of life and noise, Cecil's heart sank. They would go to Italy, Nini and she. Yes, but how could they find their way thither? how track a path out of this maze of human creatures and of traffic? The girl, tall and wonderfully lovely in her black garments—so unlike the garments, of the other girls who fluttered through the crowd,—and the old Italian woman attracted much attention at the station. They stood helplessly in the throng, and Nini clung to Cecil even as a child might have done.' A porter's query as to whether they had luggage, and if they de3ired a cab, startled Cecil into a knowledge that she must act now, not dream. Her will and courage rose to her aid. She explained the number of the trunks they had. and she said she would have a cab, and then, at the porter's suggestion, she deposited poor old Nini in the four-wheeler while she went with him to identify her luggage. A few queries elicited that to get to Italy required much travelling. '"You must start by the Continental mail; it goes to-night miss. You can go from Victoria or Charing Cross", and he roughly sketched an outline of the journey.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Cecil glanced buck at Nini's eager, wistful nervous face looking at her from the cab. Already she saw that her dear old nurse was much tired by the novelty, the fatigue, and the excitement of the moment. She herself, too, felt a longing for a few hours' rest somewhere before they had to face again the bewildering sensation of a train. "We cannot start to-night," she ■aid to herself. But where should they go for rest and shelter and till the morrow arrived? Cecil had a horror of the London streets. Although there was no fog this day, she felt herself back in that other day when Felix had swept her will into his keeping, and she had been made his wife. The thought of Paul Darnley came to her mind once, but she set this thought aside. She could not bring herself into contact once again with the life she had put so resolutely behind her. Suddenly soma written words in a letter she carried in her pocket flashed to her memory. They were the words Michael had written when he gave her his mother's address and begged her to turn to his mother if ever she should be in need of a woman's counsel or aid. Cecil gave a great sigh, and hurriedly she sought and faund Michael's letter. Slu would turn to this kind mother and aak her advice. "I am sure she will know just what we ought to do, where, we ought to go, and I am equally sure she will gladly help me. The thought, once Inn:, brought a sense of comfort. The trunks were put on tha cab, and the porter received a feu such as he rarely had in his ordinary hard-working life; then the four-whedcr was turned away from the station to wend its way to Maida Va:e. A mm) who had been lounging about lif.) platform, watching Cecil in a earless way, waited a few moments till the cab, with its burden of luggage, had rolled away, then hailing a hansom, he jumped in and was driven slowly after Cecil's very jolty equipage About an hour an! a-half later this

By Effie Adelaide Rowlands, Author of "Hu.jh Gretton's Secret," "A Splendid Heart," -'Bravo Bivlin," "The Temptation of. Mary Man," "Solina's Lovo Story," etc.

rame man was driving rapidly westward, and, calling at Doctor Bingham's fashionable little residence, was at once admitted to the consult-ing-room. Felix listened with his usual smile to what his spy had to say. He paid the man what lie asked, and dismissed him, but when he was alone Felix ceased to smile. Up to this move the game had been a farce; it had amused him to give the girl so much license. The pleasure of controlling her would be all the better when it came; and then, strong as she was in one sense, she was so utterly weak in another. Felix had never felt any longing so keen upon him as the longing he had now to crush Cecil. Her absolute defiance of him, the complete surrender of her wealth, were things that were incredible for him to realise, and he lived to punish her. Till this moment, when he had imagined her without a friend in the world—for he knew well she would hold herself away from his uncle and Paul Darnley—this punishment seemed easy enough; mere child's play to plan out. But now a different" light had been thrown on the matter. This driving to Maida Vale, thh hearty welcome of Cecil and her old nurse into the tiny house to which the detective had followed them, spoke of other influences in the girl's life of which he had known nothing, and which might throw some difficulties in the pathway of his immediate plans. For Felix had resolved not merely on crushing the spirit of contempt and hatred which had swept aside the last filmy thread of Cecil's former fascination for him, but on working so that a. great portion, ac least, of the money she was discarding so lightly should be given back to her, and through her to him. To attain this he would have to go carefully to work; but Felix was never without ways and means of his own, and the whole evil, avaricious, unprincipled nature of the man waa now stung into activity.

Oh, the agony of it! To have had the cup uf fortune in his hand—at his very lips—and to have had this cup dashed aside by a feeble, puny girl! It would go hard for Cecil the day she found herself in his hands!

CECIL FINDS A WARM FRIEND. The sun of Michael's good fortune was shining strong at; the moment when fate led Cecil Lacklyne to his mother's door. Chance might have had it that Mrs Everest might have been absent from home, out on one of her usual afternoon peregrinations, or spending an hour for a ensy chat over a cup of tea with some old friend; but nothing of this had hap pened. Michael's mother was sitting writing at her window when the cab, with its many trunks, drew up to the door. At first, surprise had held her quiet while she watched a tall, rarely lovely young woman in clinging black clothes alight and pass up the garden path; then, as she heard her name spoken hesitatingly by Cecil's voice, a lightning flash of conjecture, remembrance, and invagination mingled seemed to tell her who this strange visitor must be. To act instantly on the mere suggestion of an idea was characteristic of Cornelia Everest, and Cecil found herself being greeted almost with the warmth of an old friend She had not need even to ppeak her name. (To be Continued).