Mary's Great Mistake.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3042, 12 November 1908, Page 2

Mary's Great Mistake.

By EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS. Author of Seii.ia's Love Story "An Inherited Feud, 1 '" Brave Baibaia, "A Splendid Heart," etc., etc.

CHAPTER XlV.—Continued

He answered her hurriedly, rising as he spoke.

''Dear, dear, kind friend kind always—there is nothing in which you can help me.. I want for nothing. I think I don't feel quite vigorous to-day. It is hot, as you say, and then I am a little bothered about a mistake that has been made." "A mistake about what—by whom?" queried Mrs Massingham, whose good-natured face was now quite clouded. "A mistake that you have made, Paul?" Paul paused an instant. "No," he said, and his voice was strangely cold and hard as he spoke. "No, the mistake was not my doing, but it touches me very, very deeply all the same. Don't think any more about it, dear Mrs Massingham; it is something that can't be helped, now. It is a big mistake, a very big one; but there is no remedy for it, and it has to be borne as best it can. I think I will go to the squire now." And Paul was gone before she could stop him.

Mrs Massingham sat lost in troubled thought. "A mistake?" she said to herself. "A mistake? What can it be, I wonder? Is it soomething that happened in his young days? Something that may mar his life now? Yet, no. He said it was not a mistake of his. Then what can it be?" and then the good-hearted woman sighed. "And I thought he was so happy. Dear me! how sorrowful life is! It cannot be anything connected with Isobel, I am sure. With Isobel! How absurd lam ! As if it could have anything to do with Isobel. A little babyish creature like that. I only hope he will make the best of it, whatever it is, and that he will not let it shadow his future happiness. 1 have set my heart on seeing a sunshiny future for those two children. I always feel young again when I think of their love-story. Poor dear little Isobel, how happy she was that night, and how pretty she looked! I must speak to Paul before he goes away, and I shall tell him, whatever this horrid mistake may be, to keep it from Isobel, no matter what may happen."

CHAPTER XV,

MARY DISCLOSES HER

IDENTITY,

Mary went directly to her own room when she left Paul Hungerford so hurriedly. She set down in a chair put close to the opeu window, and then set herself a difficult task —the task uf understanding herself in her present mental condition. Usually she could gage her own feelings to their exact extent; today she did not know even how or where to begin. She was strangely nervous and strangely excited; her heart beat in a quick, restless manner, as though she had been running very fast, and her little hands lying on her lap trembled unconsciously. She felt exactly as some delicate, stately flower might feel which had sufldelily and unexpectedly encountered a strong gale of wind which, passing swiftly, had, nevertheless, shaken the plant to its-very roots.

Mary leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes, but though she shut out the picture of the sunlit gardens, with their luxuriant tranches of waving green foliage, and their myriads of summer flowers, she could not shut out that vision of Paul's face, nor drive away the memory of his broken words, it was the embodiment of love, real, living, passionate love that csrne before her eyes, and love was so strange, so incomprehensibly beautiful to her. It had never come into Mary's heart before. The infatuation that had urged her to take.so wild, so reckless a step three years ago had not even a remote kinship with love, save and only in that pity the girl felt for one who, by his own account, had been cruelly and wrongtully treated by all the world ever since his boyhood. . As a matter of fact, except for the power that Ballaston exercised over Mary by his undoubted musical genius, the man had never directly appealed to her. She had ranged harself on his side, because of Isobel's openly expressed dislike, and her attacks on the young man; attacks which alas! for poor Mary, she considered wholly unjust and unwarrantable; and when red-hot opposition had been brought to bear on her proud, impetuous, and, in those early says, somewhat intolerant nature, the result was exactly what isobel and Hugh Ballaston had calculated upon so eagerly, and with such cunning. Once the step was taken, once she understood what she had done, then came the full awakening, the awakening to all —to the folly, the wrong, the disillusionment, and to the worst side of the picture, to the horrible dread and disgust of her husband, the almost overwhelming horror of a daily, hourly life with the coarse, dissolute scamp, who had made her his wife solely and simply because he had imagined she would bring him a goodly fortune. Then, and not till then, did Mary realise the enormity of her mistake, a mistake which was almost a crime. The liking, the faith, the pity for Ballaston, melted away in an instant. She saw him for what he really was, without one redeeming quality to clothe his dishonourable individuality, without a grain of manliness, without a single trait that could be Ehapened into a hope for the future. During those three miserable years it would not be easy to trace the course of Mary's sufferings, it was too multitudinous, '

too delicate, too complex. When u!:e had lain on her hospital bed she had told herself she had tasted every possible emotion the human heart could know. Of s\ surety she had drained the cup of bUterncss to its uttermost dregs; and as she had sull'ered in her womanhood, so had she rejoiced in her girlish clays. There was no more to be learned, no new phase of the human mind"to be revealed to her. So she had thought in her ignorance, and now, as at the touch of a magic wand, she knew she had been wrong, she knew there was one emotion that, until now, had never come to her, that beyond and above the minor music ot her shadowed heart there rang out suddenly a joyous note, a note of infinite beauty, a note that grew, and broadened, and swelled as the moments passed, till it seemed to thrill throughout her whole frame, and shake her to its inmost nature, as she had sometimes been shaken by the sound of a mighty organ touched by an artist's hand.

Mary rose from her chair and walked the room in a nervous, halfconscious way. She felt frightened at the tumult in her heart, and yet she found a joy in it. She had a dazed sence as of a great happiness; she felt like one who has been walking in a dark, gloomy pathway, with shadows around and ahead, and suddenly emerges into a brilliant sunlit space with a strong, warm, golden glory blinding the eyes and startling the senses.

She bathed her eyes in cold water, but the action did not restore coherent thought. She was conscious only of a great sense of relief that she was allowed this hour alone to herself. She must rouse herself, and quickly, too, before going back to the squire's room ; but this moment of solitude was a great boon to her. She found herself wondering how long Paul was going to stay. "There is so much I should like to say to him!" she said dreamily, as she stood looking out on the gardens again. "So many, many things j for which I ought to thank him;" and then she flushed hotly as she remembered that last night she had seen him in the dingy lodgings at Rivington, and what mission of love and thought had brought him there. Her heart thrilled, but there was no pain in the thrill; it did not hurt her to remember this charity he had done to her. There was no proud resentment or hurt in knowing now how much she owed him. The love that had come so suddenly, so strongly, into her thoughts gave her that illimitable sense of sympathy with all he must have suffered for her through his love. Her one regret was that she had never known what a true friend he had been to her in those days, what a noble heart had beat in sorrowful unison with hers for so long. It came upon her slowly, as she stood lost in thought, that much as she wished to speak, silence, alter all, would be best. If he had thought her hard and cruel in that past, she would do all in her power to atone for her proud renunciation of his friendship, and this need not necessarily be put inco plain words. She would be able to convey her feelings without hurt to either of them. (To be continued.)