A SENSATIONAL CASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9170, 19 August 1908, Page 2

A SENSATIONAL CASE.

s CHAPTER Xl.—Continued. "Are you in earnest?" asked he. "Joes it really matter to you?" "Matter! Oh!" Netelka was half-crying. "I should think it does! k's simply too dreadful to see all of yiu playing into the hands of this j;W, and—arid throwing away money just to benefit him !" Then she turned away her head, blushing painfully, remembering that her own husband must share the blame of Mr Moseley's proceedings. Gerard noted the blush, and probably guessed the cause. At any rate, he took a lighter tone in answering her. "Don't you give rather a superstitious reverence to money?" he said. '-'Why shouldn't we spend it 99 \ye pjeaso. Afld why shouldn't we pay fop gntjcjpattag tb e use we like? Don't you knew i? l3 * ™° n e.v can't pass from on? hand to another «««•»! that spendthrifts have their appointed mission in the world?" "Ah, but what will you do when the money's squandered? Isn't it absurd to risk years of poverty for the sake of a few months of extravagant waste? Oh, if you knew what it is to be miserably, miserably poor, if you knew what it makes people ready to do, you wouldn't risk it, I am pure!" The words died away on Netelka s lips. Her colour changed from rosy pink to ashen gray. The hand she had raised in earnest gesticulation fell at tW Side. teani appeared in her dark ey63j • | p Gerard tujjnd his head quickly, ] following her glance. Linley, fair, pale, effemininate-looking as ever, had come into the room with his light, womanish step and his little mincing manner. He had advanced as far ai the little side-table, on whi:h stood some lojks and porcelain ligures. ' "Ah! Here you are, Waller. We've! all been wondering what had become { of you. You have been much missed | —in the smoking-roum." | Gerard was not easily taken at a • disadvantage. He answered imper- | turbably: j "I thought you were all coming in here, or I certainly should not have ' obtruded myself upon Mrs Hilliard. I, shall have to ask you to intercede ! with her for me for having bored h.r to death." 1 "She doesn't look bored," said Linley, in his gentlest tones. His face betray id nothing whatever. He might have been the gentlest, sweetest-tempered, most harmless little man in the world but tor | his wife's expressin of consternation 1 ur.d alarm. It "gave him away," as j Gerard said to himself. "Netta, my dear," went on Linley, in the kindest and most persuasive of tones, '"you mustn't sit up iny longer. These young fellows will be up smoking and telling poind sj stories till two or three in the morning, so that they will be too tired to come down, like decent people, in time for church. But you are not to ; put yourself out on their account; let ( them go their own way and look after i their own souls." I Gerard had by this time shaken ( hands with Netelka, and followed his | host's suggestion to the extent of walking to the door. There he paused a moment and looked back. And he saw Linley emphasise his last words to his wife with a very expressive frown. CHAPTER XII. \ NETELKA'S CONVERT. The morriing's thoughts are so different from those of the night! Netelka had gone to bed heartbroken, despairing, believing that her attempted remonstrance with Gerard Waller had been thrown away, i and that her husband was so deeply j displeased with her that a final rup- i ture with him was imminent. She had been awake when Linley came upstairs to bed at three o'clock in the morning, but she had feigned, sleep to avoid a conversation which she feared. I When her early cup of tea was j brought, however, and she saw the sun streaming in between drawn window curtains, and her husband gave j her a morning kiss with seraphic cheerfulness, Netelka found, with sur- ( prise, that her views of life were pot j the same as on the previous night, j It was not that she had forgotten the incidents oi the evening, but that j she was now able to persuade herse'f that they might btar a less <r gic interpretation than tha one she had j put upon them. I f What harm was there in cardplaying among friends? And what i proof had she that the stakes they ; played for would have been so high i as to shock her? She begai t I feel ashamed of her interference m : the dining-room, and a blush tingled ; in her cheeks as she thought oi hex unavailing app' a! to Gerard How he must have laughed at her; She told herself that he had probably | related to hi* friends, Sam Teal n I Arthur Sainsbury, the story or ner little sermon. It must, she thought, have seemed particularly piquant and amusing, coming, as it did from the wife of the man who had asked him and his friends down her.-) with; the promise, expressed or impiied, j of a long and uninterrupted gambling > bout! j As she sipped her tsa her husband's voics startled her. ' "Well," said he cheerfully, "what are you so serious about?" She was sitting by the fire in her dressing-gown, and she turned, with a rapid change of colour. She had quietly drawn back the curtains of one of the windows, and the light of the winter sun streamed on her face. Linley laughed softly. "Did I frighten you?" asked he

By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of " The Ltuly in Black," "An Infamous Fraud," "For Love of Jack," Terrible Family," "The llousd on the Marsh," etc. o!c.

gently. "Yes, rather. I thought you were asleep." Linley laughed again. Ho seemed in the best of humours this morning.

"Mustn't goto sleep again, or I shall be late for church," said he. "Ami with ihe house full of those devil-may-care young scapegraces, it behoves us to set a good example and to be specially careful of our reputation with our neighbours." "Oh, yes," assented Netelka, not quite knowing how to meet a mood so unexpected.

And then she was silent. When he next spoke he startled her ngain, for he had wrapped his dressing-gown round him and was speaking close to her ear.

"Look here, Netta, my dear," said he in a caressing tone, "I want to speak you. I have been worrying myself, darling, because I seemed father harsh to you last night." He frer hand, and played with it softly w! fh hi ® own , white fingers, as he spoue. se ®> dearest, it was rather trying-~-fi°w, wasn't it?—to have my wife, ray own wife, addressing my guests as if they were swindlers, and forbidding them to enjoy themselves in the way they preferred? Surely, my dear, if I were satisfied that they should amuse themselves with ia game at cards, that ought to have been enough for you. Don't you think so? I can't tell you what a painful effect it had upon me to find you Suddenly acting, as if you and I were t.vo opposing forces, instead of being, as we have always been, the best of friends. How was it, dear, that you came to act so rudely? Tell me, come tell me how it was?" Netelka trembled, between hope and fear, as she looked into her husband's countenance, her passionate eyes trying to read the pale, calm face. But the blue eyes kept their own secrets; the small mouth, small enough for a woman, with its pale, bloodless lips, smiled and told her nothing. "I—l—oh, Linley, I am sorry, I spoke as I did; very sorry! But I was puzzled, troubled. I have heard things about this house, Linley, heard that it was a place where gamblers used to come. And I thought—how could I help thinking?—when I found that the same men were coming down hero that used to come before, that Moseley was deceiving us, and that he only wanted us to come to this place to give it an air of respectability by pretending that we were his tenants, while really he meant to carry on the place in the old way !" Linley, who was kneeling beside her chair, holding her hand in his, and kissing it from time to time with demonstrative affection, listened with the deepest attention. At the end, however, he laughed rather bitterly. "An air of respectability!" echoed he. "When we are the hero and heroine of a gorgeous scandal! of a cause celebre." "But people don't know that!" whisperrd Netelka, with a shiver. "And if they did—oh! if they did, Linley—wouldn't they be sorry for us, and not harsh to us? You know you were acquitted, Linley," she went on rapidly, clasping his hands so tightly that her fingers left their marks in livid patches on the white skin. "I often wish hadn't persuaded us to change our name, Linley. It look 3as if—as if — (To be continued.)