THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3072, 17 December 1908, Page 2

THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

CHAPTER ill.—Continued. : j ! In the privacy of her own apart-' Edith made one moiti attempt to change her husband's purpose of ; ■ ; going to Heathcote House. But in 1 , vain. He was bent on putting himself to the torture of going. It was torture, for bad and tyrannical as the old man was, he adored his wife, j and was madly jealous of handsome j Heathcote, because Edith had been J engaged to him. j Edith went into a room were Barbara Fane sat sewing. Her face was very pale, her eyes gloomily. "I want you to bear me witness, Barbara," she said, that 1 ha\e j done all I could to prevent this visit j to.Heathcote House." > Barbara looked up, an expression J of anxiety filling her steady, honest "It is settled, mistress." I "Yes. That girl Rose is bent on j ruining me, and fancies it can be | Accomplished by getting me foi a month under the same roof with my cousin and my husband at the same •' time. She has so worked upon Mr Tyrrell sensitiveness to what people may say of him if he don t go that he is set upon going, at the same time that he is wrecked at the thought of it." "Will you go, mistress?" "I cannot avoid it. I have done 1 all I could," she said wearily. "You will have to be very careful." Edith's face darkened again. Her lips curled and her eyes lightened with haughty anger. "A pleasant month it will be to me, with Rose on one hand to watch me, misconstrue and report eveiy word and look of mine, and my husband on the other to judge me." "She is a snake, mistress; but he loves you." "Loves me? Yes, as the sultan does the beautiful Circassian slaves of his harem. I am afraid he will strike me some day, Barbara." "Oh, no! no!" "He will!" "Oh, mistress, no!" . "If he does, Barbara, I shall kill him!" . Barbara fell back m her chair, ghastly white. ' "Don't say that, mistress. I know you don't mean it, but don't say such awful things. It isn't safe." "You're right, Barbara. It's not safe. I sDokc in temper, of course, and it's not safe to even think such things, particularly when one detests another as Ido Fairfax Tyrrell, and with such reason. I've got an ugly temper of my own, I know, but I would have been a good wife to him, if he had let me." Barbai-a clasped her hands. "Miss, I'm an old woman, old enough to be your mother. May I talk to you like a mother? You know I love you like one." Tears iushed to Edith's eyes. She laid her little white hands tenderly on the old woman's shoulders and looked down at her with a quivering smile. "You may say anything vou like to me, Barbara. 1 believe you're the only real friend I've got in this world." "Tell me, then, mistress, dear, does your heart hold yet one spark of love for your cousin?" Edith started violently. "Whv do you ask me that, BarYou know better th<in anyone else how little cause I have to love him." "You're in ten times the danger it you love him, than you are if you don't." "I don't hate him as much as 1 ought to, Barbara. I loved him so dearly once, and 1 am as sure a« that you sit there that something awful will happen if we go to Heathcote. Why, look at them! Rose so wicked, malicious and sly; Randal so obstinate, unprincipled, and reckless —and he fancies himself moie madly in love with me than ever and my husband is jealous, so hasty, so hot-tempered. He often threatens to kill me or Randal; and yet he will have him here, and we'll go now to Heathcote." "You don't believe that your cousin really loves you yet." "Not with a love that is worth having. He'd be as ready the engagement to-day as he was before. There's as much reason now as there was then." "Mistress, whatever happens, and however, and however true it may be, don't let him see if, if you do love him. You're a lost woman the moment you own to him that you love him yet." "I know it Barbara, and I don t love him —I won't love him. Why should 1?"

CHAPTER IV. "I DIDN'T MARRY YOU FOR LOVE." The Tyrrells went to Heathcote House the following week. Fairfax Tyrrell made the journey as unpleasant as nossible to Miss Altman and his wife; but Rose bore it placidly, sustained by hopes of the success of her plans. Edith betrayed no annoyance, whatever she felt. She was resolved to keep a smart watch upon herself during the visit. She little knew what she would have to encounter. Though Randal Heathcote was her cousin, she had never been at Heathcote House before. She and her husband were given what were called the "Nell Gwynne" chambers, from an absurd legend of the house that that fair and frail favourite of a king had once occupied them for a whole month. r 'Hh had beard of these chambers, the ".ncct in the house, but having a bs 'lrr''* 1 " the of the Heath cote's. A Lord Heathcote had been

By HELEN CORWIIn PIERCE, Author of "At His Own Game," "Carrie Emerson "VVilde," "Badly Matched," "The Cheated Bride," Etc.

stabbed to the heart by a guest :whom he had wronged in one of these very roonis, and a Lady had flung herself, in a fit of despairing jealousy, through one of the deep, wide casements and dashed her brains out on the stones of the court below. Edith shuddered as she heard the legends, and, faltering on the threshhold, turned back. "I don't like these rooms," she said to her cousin. "Why not?" They are the finest in the house —the largest and most c >r venient in every way." But his eyes sank uneasily before h ?r's, and he put up his hands to hide a queer srrile that was lurking about his lips. Fairfax Tyrrell tui'ned back also. "I don't like these rooms, either," he bluntly said. "You won't mind my saying so, Heathcote, seeing we are cousins ?" The old man tried to laugh, but succeeded only in producing / a sound more like a groan, for at that moment he caught sight of himself and Heathcote side by side in a mirror opposite, and the contrast between the youth and good looks of the oi.e and the age and ugliness of the other struck him with painful vividness.^ "Certainly not," Heathcote gaily returned," "I should choose, for my own part, to have you on the othir side of the house. My own apartments are there. I only gave you these because of their being the best, i and I didn't know my cousin here was nervous." 1 "I'm not," instantly retorted Edith, "I shouldn't care if twenty murders had been done in these rooms. That is not the reason I don't like them." "What is the reason, then?" demanded her husband, resolved not to be located any nearer Heathcote. Edith's cheeks flushed hotly, then grew white. She could have bitten her tongue out for having said so much. It was entirely out of the question to tell her husband the true reason for her horror, fear, and abhorrence of these luxurious and beautiful, but wicked, rooms. "1 am sure the sun never strikes them," she muttered hurriedly, "and they are so large, and so dark." Heathcote put his hand to his mouth again to conceal that strange smile. "Very well," he said, "you can have rooms on the other side of the house if vou like." Fairfax Tyrrell was watching his wife's perturbed face. Suspicious ever, he guessed that she had not given the true reason for her clialike of the rooms, and on that account he was inclined to keep - them -out of sheer perverseness. But he had an odd horror of them himself. A sort of chill had crept over him as he entered them, and the superstition that was a part of his strange nature had assailed him at Edith's allusion to the murder of Lord Heathcote, said to have been done in that very room. (To be continued).