THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3086, 7 January 1909, Page 2

THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

CHAPTER XllL—Continued. "Sleep-walking again?" he muttered, and crept noiselessly towards it , . Edith stood before the very picture he had come to see. She sighed once or twice, and then glanced from this toward one further down the hall, the picture of her dead husband. She drew slowly toward the last, as if forced by some power beyond her own will, and a perceptible shudder ran through her. An agony and passion were visible on htr face which it pained him to see. She clasped her hands and moaned in her pain, "Don't look so a ! t me! God knows if wish of me could blot out that awful night, and bring you back, it should be done." For the first time, Frank Tyrrell doubted this beautiful Edith's innocence of his uncle's death. • He approached her in some agitation himself, / i "You must have loved your hus-! bpdyerymucb, Mrg Tyrrell?" he laid'in a dry, hard voieet ' , Edith wheeled about With a stats of horror. What had she been saying? . What had this man overheard? Then she became angry and calmer "I never pretended, even to himself, that I loved him. You do not ask for information." "I beg your pardon; I did not know you were here when I came. Your agitation confounded me alter what I had heard of the motives which influenced you to marry my uncle." , , , "How long have you been watching me?" demanded Edith arrogant-

ly. "I don't know, perhaps ten minutes."

Edith's lips curled. "You are Rose's worthy cousin. I suppose she set you after me?" "i don't know what you mean by setting me after you!" Frank said haughtily. j Edith threw up her head. "I had no thought of finding you here when I came." "And no intention of spying on me afterward?"

"Mrs Tyrrell!" "Pardon the word spyng, baiwi said, but said it haughtily, and left him with a sweeping bow. Frank Tyrrell went away to his own room again, without glancing ac bis own picture once. "I never thought so badly of her as Ido to-night," he said to himself angrily, "and she never looked sj beautiful as she did with that flush of wrath on her face, its flash in ner raiinighteyes!" The two met at breakfast with cool politeness. Neither wished Rose to see there was any different feeling from usual between them, but ntither could quite act as before last night. Rose, saw, wondered, and exulced. "It's a breach. I've only to widen it," she thought. Towards noon Heathcote presented himself. . It was the third time he had visited Edith. "I've tracked that girl here, he said. "I've heard all about you sending for Dorcas Lynn, and I know why you did it. Now, then, where is Lois? I've come for her and I mean to have her!" . Eduh's black eyes watched him as she crossed the room and sat down near him. She brushed a speck of dust from her black dress and arranged her cuffs before she spoke. "You can't have her," she slowly said. "She's in safe hands. Dorcas is devoted to me, you know, and would not listen, whatever Lois said. Besides, whatever harm she could do is done. 1 have had her more than three weeks now. No one suspects she is in the house, but Dorcas, and I. You can stay the day and see for yourself." • Heathcote was confounded at her attitude and firmness. He stayed, partly to consider the best course, partly to see if anyone there would look coldly on him, for any reason, either as suitor to Edith, or as having had any interest in Fairfax Tyrrell's death. "That's the third time in two months that Randal Heathcote has been here," Rose whispered to Frank. "They're bound to marry, now that they've got that poor old man out of the way, and have secured his money. Frank clenched his teeth, and felt himself turn cold with jealous rage. "She can't be so shameless as to think of marrying that man, after all!" he muttered to himself. Then, catching in the grounds a glimpse of a white shawl Edith sometimes wore, and seeing Heathcote coming smilingly across the terrace towards Rose Altman, he broke for the shubberies at as dignified a pace as his jea'lcusy and impatience would permit him. i As he neared Edith, who was walking slowlv, and with a weary look, he walked more leisurely. "You have a call from on old friend* Mrs Tyrrell," be Bald, with an attempt at lightness. But his voice shook. ~,.-. Edith lo.iked up, her white face paling a little more. "Yes," she said, ''a very old friend." Frank bit his lip. . "So I have heard," he said bitterly "He was your friend, and something more, before you married my uncle. I presume he would like to assume the old relations now." He was ashamed of his own impertinence, but Edith looked so beautiful and so cold, and that man Heathcote had looked so handsome and exultant, his own heart was boiling over with love and pain. Edith's eyes flashed. " A, ou do presume!" she said, with ..idignant emphasis. i "T beg your pardon. I only wanted fto add my congratulations to those your own heart must be makirg'

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

you." Edith's lips quivered in spite ot her. She averted her head quickly, and moved towards the house. Prank followed her. His jealousy and his love combined to overcome that resolution he had made not to offer marriage to the woman whom rumour connected so unpleasantly with hir uncle'a death, and of whom he had himself ascertained fearful doubts the night he witnessed her agony in the picturegallery. "EdUh," he cried, with sudden, passionate appealing, "wait! Forgive my impertinence! I was mad with jealousy, I love you so!" Edith stopped short Her face turned deadly white. She studied his excited countenance doubtfully some moment). Perhaps this was another impertinence. "1 don't think you mean it," she said at last; "and. if you do, you ought not to, with the opinion you have of me." "The opinion I have of you?" he guiltily stsaunerd. "I swear to you, Edith— -'*• Sue "feed both her hands; her eyes were cold and stern. "Do.i't perjure yourself," she said. "You could take no oath to your faith in me that I would believe. I am a good reader of faces, and I read in yours, that night in the picture-gallery, what you thought of me." "I think nothing evil of you," he asserted. "You fear it, then." He winced, in spite of himself, under her brilliant and penetrating glance. j "I knew it," she said, and left him this time without even looking back ac his wild gestures of protestation. Frank uttered a sigh of despair. "I have lost her!" he said; "and I believe she is as white-souled as an angel!" Heathcote had also come in search of Edith. He was in time to catch a fragment of this conversation. He saw the passion in Frank's face, the agitation in Edith's, and a" demon seemed to rend his own soul. "Are you going to marry that man?" he demanded an hour later, meeting Edith. "I will never permit it. If you will not marry me, you shall marry no one—least of all, the nephew of him!" hldith threw up her head with an imperious gesture. "W ( hom I marry is, and can be, no concern of yours, Randal. You have my promise concerning your most unhappy secret. I shall keep it at the peril of my own life and happiness. Beyond that, you shall not go; 1 will not be interfered with and threatened at every turn in this manner." Heathcote looked away sullenly. I "Do you mean to marry him?" he asked in a low voice, and in a much more subdued manner than before. "I do not recognise your right to ask me that question." "Granted, tnen, that I have not the right, will you tell me, for the sake of old times?" ' Why do you wish to know?" (To be continued).