Mary's Great Mistake.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3038, 7 November 1908, Page 2

Mary's Great Mistake.

CHAPTER Xll.—Continued. She broke into a run down the narrow pathway. At her right stretched a tail hedge. She saw Paul suddenly turn his rein and swerve, and put his mare full at this hedge. As Isobel ran swiftly forward to escape his jump, for now he was close upon he, the mare shied at her fleeting gray figure. There was a crash, a confusion of othdr sounds, and theu the mare was rushing wildly across the field, and Paul lay at Isobel's feet motionless. She feared at first —dead. To do her justice, Isobel was terribly distressed. She was frozen with fear for that moment. The next, she was kneeling beside him in the mud, and was trying to gage the extent of his injuries, and bring him to consciousness ™ain. The fall had sfunried him, but Isobel knew, when the first alarm wore away, that he was not dead. She bent over him. chafing his hands and his brows, The love she felt for him was at its most sincere and true height in this moment. She forgot herself, and thought of him. As he moved a little, however, and as one or two farm labourers, attracted by the sight of the runaway horse came hastily toward her, Isobel forgot him, and thought of herself. She'began speaking, calling on his foame, entreating him to answer. Paui opened his eyes suddenly. He ■looked at her starngely, ftxedly. His •lips moved; his voice sounding far away, feeble, hollow, like the voice <<of one in a distant world. '"You call me from the grave," he isaid, as he spoke. "And I come —I come, my love!" Isobel's face flushed. Her heart beat violently. "You love me!" she said, hardly conscious of his strange, wild look. "You love me, Paul? You love me?" The words re-echoed again and again in her brain, in her heart, in every nerve of her body. Paul answered her in the same hoarse voice, the same vague way. He was like one speaking in his sleep. "I love you, Mary," he said; "did you not know it? I have loved you all this time, all this time. I have loved you better than my life and now you come to greet me. My l<*ve-1 My love! My heart's love!" I The words died away in a sigh; the eyes closed; the head fell hack on Isobel's lap; her head was berst over him. She felt suddenly as though a blast of icy wind had been poured upon her delirium of unexpected happiness. For one brief moment phe had thought he was hers. The next revealed the truth. He was not even conscious of her presence. He spoke to another —to some shadowy spirit who stood ever in his path., ilived ever in his thoughts—to a woman called Mary! Isobel felt suddenly ehpked:; all her life long she had hated the name of Mary; to htr it had been synonymous with everything "she most detested, She could never endure even to see the word written or printed; and now, now in this, the most supreme moment of her life, she was thrust into the background, passed over, forgotten, and for a woman who bore the very name, of all others, most offensive to her ears. She set her teeth, and turned very pale. Her first natural instinct was to rise, and leave this man in the care of two persons who had arrived on the scene. In a second, howaver, she was herself again absolutely, ready, keen, quick to make the best of the events of this moment.

One of the farm people was a woman. She had arrived in good time to over hear Paul's last few words, and she immediately grasped the situation as Isobel desired it Bhould be grasped. "Don't fear, miss," she said kindly, the presence of love and suffering touching the chord of sympathy common to all women; "he'll be all right. Let me come. I know about such things. He looks bad; but he's all right, I'm sure. Jim,'" to the boy beside her, "run and fetch water, and tell Tom to come. We'll carry your sweetheart to the farm, miss; he'll soon be all right." It was these words that decided Isobel. The rough farm woman had guessed wrongly, but she had good reasons for so guessing, since she could not attribute another meaning to Paul's impassioned words. Therefore, Isobel Marston could not do less than follow this man's example, and take to herself the love that she knew was ndt for her, and never would be, now. Paul, still unconscious, was driven home in a cart to Mrs Massingham's house, and Isobel sat beside him; and, when he had been carried upstairs, she had burst out crying in Mrs Massingham's arms, and the rest had been very easy. If any doubt or future difficulty presented itself to Isabel's mind as she sat beside Paul's couch, waiting for Laurie to come, she resolutely refused to see is. She had worked swiftly by this time. The story of her romantic betrothal was in everybody's mouth, and she was quite certain the farm woman who had accompanied them back to the house wo,uki have told Mrs Massingham her version of the affair, with her own So, as she sat at the dinner-table, despite the memory of Laruie's cold manner, i L I was not very strange that hi\?3 Marston should find coTsider&tij' cause for self-congratulation. The fact that Paul, the person who, r.ezt to herself, was the most important item in the affair of the moment, had as yet practically no knowledge of the great change that had ccme t© his future life, did occasion-

By EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS. Aii hi r of Selina'3 _Love S:ory "An Inherited Feud," " Brave Barbara," "A Splendid Heart," etc., etc.

ally trouble her a little, to be sure; but Isobel saw, fortunately for herself, not of a particularly delicate mental organisation, and in her triumph of having won the game against such tremendous odds, she could afford to sacrifice some small feelings. What certain could not be very diflicult, and her engagement was now so much an accomplished fact that it would be no easy task for Paul tJ escape from fulfillina it honourably, even if he should evince | the smallest desire to do so. But Isobel knew that, if her mistake was ever gaged by Paul to its full extent, he would never permit her to be aware of this. Being so destitute of all honour, pride, and delicacy herself, she yet built most strongly on these qualities in the man she intended to marry. j

CHAPTER XIII. FACE TO FACE AGAIN. Another month had passed, and it was now late in April. Mary told herself she was quite recovered, and she said the same thing to Dr. Cartwright, on the occasion of one of his flying visits. "And I want you to give me some thing more to do. Some real work," she said, looking at him straight out of her beautiful brown eyes. "What an impetuous person you are, to be sure," George Cartwright said, with a faint smile. "You want something all at once —■ now —this moment, this very moment ! What sort of work do you want, pray? Now, out with it. You have something on your mind. Some plan. Why will you have such a transparent face? I can read your every thought." "And I always prided myself on my extraordinary faculty for deceiving people," Maiy replied, with a blush and a laugh. "Of course,"' she added, with a suddenly revealed touch of youth and mischief, "of course, I am speaking of ordinary individuals, not magicians, or mysterious persons who dive into other people's most secret corners, and drag out these same secrets so ruthlessly!" She paused, sending him another smile. He was standing with his back to the fire, seeming very grim and resolutely stern, bard to those who did not know him, but everything that was goad, and kind, and staunch to those who, like Mary, did know and understand him. j "1 want to be a nurse," she said quietly, after that pause. "I am sure I have a distinct qualification for the life. Miss Davis will tell you so, I know. I have been going into the whole training most thoroughly and I am sure I should do well." "You have a tremendous opinion of yourself, Mrs Barnes!" was Dr. Cartwright's observation. "And I want you to endorse that opinion, if you please, Dr. Cartwright," was Mary's reply, given lightly, but with the faint contraction of the brows that always came when she heard herself addressed by him in the name she had assumed. (To be continued.)