Mary's Great Mistake.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3025, 23 October 1908, Page 2

Mary's Great Mistake.

By EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS. Author of Selina's Love Story "An Inherited Feud," " Brave Barbara," "A Splendid Heart," etc., etc.

CHAPTER V.—Continued. v "It is really quite a delightful little place, and don't mind confess- s ing to you, Mrs Barnes, that this \ home is my favourite hobby. I ' started it some three years ago for * consumptive children and such other poor, suffering atoms of humanity r that came under my care in this \ great, hungry, despairing London world of poverty and pain. It has \ been more than successful. I am glad to say. The county people have taken it up, and have made it their < pet charity, and the children for whom it was started have flocked ' there by twenties and thirties. It is * the very air for you. Whiterock 1 has the sun all the year round. A ' couple of weeks will? give you any * amount of strength, and then you can 1 commence your duties, which I * don't think you will find very hard or J difficult." "My duties!" Mary repeated the word faintly; J he could see the excitement, throb- t bing in her throat. "Yes"—he rose as he spoke— 'I j have been in want of a lady super in- ' tendent for some time past. 'lhere < is a matron, of course, and an assistant matron, but they have their < hands full, and some one is needed J above them. Some one of a different class, who has brains, and is capable of directing the whole ma- * chinery of the establishment; who £ will attend to the correspondence and meet any visitors who may wish to inspect the place; it struck me that you would be the very person. My magician's skill, you see, soon 1 divined that. The difficulty, of course, I have felt was in proposing < such a scheme to " Mary caught his hand in her little ones; it seemed to George Cartwright as though some fairy had suddenly radiated his being with sunshine, as he felt the touch of those small, weak fingers and the kiss her lips pressed on his hand. | He drew it away quickly. A thrill had passed through him, such as he had never experienced before. "Do you consent?" he asked, and his steady voice was not quite so steady. Mary did not answer him with words, she was lying back on her pillow, her hands pressed over her eyes: but the big tears escaped their hold and rolled through her fingers and down her cheek. George Cartwright stood looking at her irresolutely for an instant, a sudden hot flush of colour had mounted to his dark face. Whatever the weakness and emotion was that came to him, he conquered it. His voice was just as usual when he spoke again, laying one strong, cool hand on her hot brow. "In a fortnight then," he said, Whiterock Convalescent Home will welcome its new mistress, and do its best to restore her to health and strength, and to give her peace and happiness." And thus saying, he kept his hand an instant longer on her brow, and then he was gone, and Mary was alone to try and realise by degrees what had happened, with a heart full of emotions that were as impossible to describe, as to subdue in such a moment. CHAPTER VI. LADY ISOBEL DECIDES TO BRING THINGS TO A CLIMAX. Lady Hungerford was, of course, full of evil prognosticatons about Paul, and the extraordinary attack of faintness that had spoiled the evening at "The Elms." She was also annoyed that the evening should have been married, and she was exceedingly curious besides. There was no doubt that Paul had been perfectly well in the drawingroom just before dinner—well, in fact, up to the moment he had been handed that telegram by the butler as thev were passing through the hall. * "I hope Paul has not had bad news," she said, in her most austre manner as Laurie came runnin* down-stairs, when dinner was halfway through, to whisper comfort in her mother's ear and drive the pale anxiety from the sweet, comely face. "I am sorry to say he has," Laurie made answer to this. She had glanced at the telegram when she had bean up-stairs, feeling that the anguish of the moment justified what, at a less critical time, would have been a wrong act. With Paul unconscious, lying like a dead man on his bed, however, Laurie felt she must know something of what had happened, so as to be prepared for future circumstances. For this reason only she allowed herself to read the telegram that had carried a message of such potent grief -and power as to still for a time the strong, courageous heart, and steins the current of life itself. Her own face had grown very pale as she read. She had alliei.* herself, in her thoughts and imaginations, eo closely to this secret sorrow of Paul's, this strange, uti3een, unknown influence which had worked such a change in him, that the blow that had struck him, struck her in a faint sort of way. She wan very tender to him. and would not >ea 'c him till the reason had returned to his' eyes arid the colour to his lips. Even then she wocl,! not have gone,' but she read his mute entreaty to keep the others irons him, to leave him alone in this the darkest hour of his life. "Tell mother that I " he tried to whisper, and she took up his broken words. j "I will r.-.">e mother perfectly! happy; leave i. :o .ne."

She was her usual cheerful self when she joined the dinnerparty. "He is quite well, darling," she said to Lady Emily; "absolutely well, only he has had a shock —he has heard suddenly or. the dea th of a close friend." "How terrible!" Isohel Marston murmured faintly. Lady Hungerford was not quite satisfied. "What friend, Laurie?—some one we all know, or " "No; a friend he met when- he was abroad, one of his travelling companions." Laurie set her teeth; she was face to face with a series of inventions, and she did not like lies in any form; but in such a moment, with the vision of Paul's white, anguishstricken face before her, and the knowledge of his heart's sufferings, she felt she must parry her aunt's attack to the best of her ability. "A travelling companion!" Lady Hungerford echoed. "Not Lord Eustace I hope, Laurie?" "No," Laurie answered quietly; "not Lord Eustace Fitzgore, Aunt Anne, r.o one so important. A young man of no social pretensions whatsoever; a simple commoner, but a man whom Paul loved, and whose untimely death he mourns from the bottom of his heart." Isobel, playing with some food on her plate, gave a glance at Laurie's face, at these words, with her shrewd cold eyes. "It is not a man; it has something to do with a woman," she said to herself, and she suddenly felt a hot, wild sense of jealousy within her. Jealousy was always more or less active in Miss Marston's composition. Although she had only met Paul Hungerford the other day, she was jealous already, jealous because she had imagined something vague about an equally vague other woman. The remembrance of his apathy and indifference to herself and her charms did'not tend to reduce this absurd feeling; it made her very angry, but it also increased the keen interest she took in anything connected with the heir to the Hungerford title, and was a spur to the plans, ideas, thoughts, which had been circling in her brain since she had met him. Lady Hungerford was not wholly satisfied with her niece's explanation; she commenced the attack in another way. "I should telegraph for Quain to come and see Paul to-morrow, if I were you, Emily," she said in her most sentious manner. "There is no one who is such an authority on the heart as Quain, in my estimation." Lady Emily, of course, turned suddenly pallid, and a look of agony came into her eyes as she turned them toward her daughter. Laurie was furious with her aunt, but she had to think of her mother. She burst out laughing "Dear Aunt Anne, as if there were anything the matter with Paul's heart!" she exclaimed. Lady Hungerford chose to be annoyed. "I don't consider it a laughing matter, Laurie," she said coldly; "something must be the matter Young men don't fall down suddenly in a faint lor nothing," (To be continued.)