THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3089, 11 January 1909, Page 2

THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

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

CHAPTER XV.—Continued

A servant was sent to Mr Heathcote's room, but could get no answer to his knock. "Why the deuce need Edith look so white about it?" thought Frank savagely. "What's Heathcote to her?" Then he dashed away from the table, and, calling the man who had just been there, went back to Heathcote's doar. "Bring an axe!" he yelled, when the door°wouidn't open, and burst it in with a crash. It was Edith's ghastly face that looked in over his shoulder. Edith it was who fainted dead away when the room proved to be empty. She had to be lifted in strong arms and carried away to her chambers. Dorcas Lynn turned every one, even to her maid, out of the room, and tended to her herself. Edith Tyrrell lay in a delirious fever for weeks. Her life was despaired of more than once. Rose Altman listened hungrily to hear she was dead. Frank Tyrrell only waited to hear that to die, too. One day Edith opened her big black eyes with returning sense shining from them. Dorcas Lynn was bending over her. "What have I said?" she asked. _ "Nobody heard you but me," said Dorcas, dashing a tear out of her eye with one skinny hand. ""Did you hear all?" "Never mind, Miss Edy; you're an angel. You know your old Dorcas, don't you?" ■,,_,.. •= Edith sighed heavily and shut her eyes. Presently she opened them again. J'Has either been heard from?"

"No." , „ "And I've lain here—how long "Six weeks, Miss Edy." She lay with closed eyes a little longer. she reached for Dorcas' poor old wrinkled hand. "Do you know everything, Dorcas, dear?" . , tl "Miss Edy, if I do, it's the same as if it was locked in your own breast yet." "I took a solemn oath never to tell it." Edith said, with a prolonged sijgh. _ "It wasn't you; it was the lever. 1 wouldn't worry about it. Not a breath shall cross my lips more than though I had never heard it." "Dorcas, where do you think that poor Lois is?" . "God knows, miss, and God is more mercitul than we." Eaith's slim fingers twined on those oi Dorcas. "Do you know what Im afraid of?" she asked. "I'm afraid he's done by her as he did by poor Captain Tyrrell." "Oh, no, no, Miss Edy!" the old woman ejaculated in an awful fright. "Why should he do that?" A week later Frank Tyrrell bad left Blackmere. He had asked Edith, in to many words to marry him, and she had refused. Edith had crept forth into the grounds one morning and seated herself on a sunny bank out of sight of the house, when there was a rustle among the bushes below her. They parted and revealed the pale, loathed and feared face of her cousin, Randal

Heathcote. He stood a moment, smiling diabolically, and then sauntered carelessly toward her. "Thoughtl was dead, didn't you?" he asked mockingly. a shudder ran through Edith as she sat up and looked at him. white with incredulity and horror of him. "How dared" you come back," she asked.

He threw himself down upon the turf and looked up at her with cool, defiant insolence. "I have taken no oath to conceal this last wickedness of yours," she said, her lips shaking. She tried to rise, but, between weakness and agitation, was unable to do so. Heathcote lifted his eyebrows. "What was the last, Mrs TyrrellV" "You know. Where is that unhappy girl? Where is Lok?" He smiled, without answering. Edith Tyrrell leaned forward and looked at him, her hands clasped tightly together, in her black eyes a faint light of hope. He could not look that way if what she feared was true. He could;/1 smile in placid way if he had really hurt her, poor little Lois, and yet there was something in his face, something lurking under bis chill smile, under that sidelong glance of bis. that made her he:»rt ache with horror. "Oh, Randal!" she whispered, "only tell me she is safe! it has nearly driven me mad, the fear that vou had—killed her!" He became deadly pale, but he laughed still. "Well, 1 haven't; she's .safesafer than she ever was before," he added to himself, but not so low but that she heard him. She locked at him searchingly. In what dreadful place had he hidden Lois now? She felt that it would be useless to ask him, but she did it. "Where is she?" "You'd be nearer going mad than ever if I told you," he said, with so fell a look that she dared not repeat the question. Then he lay back upon the grass and clasped his hands above his eyes. Edith could but notice how wasted and bony his hands were, how sunken and haggard his face. He was dressed, too, a3 she had never seen him before. His clothes were coarse and dirty, the sleeve of his coat wa3 badly torn, as if in a scuffle, and on the wrist nearest her was the mark of a topv wound not ye+ healed. "Where have you been all this time, Randal?" L she asked—"with J He leaped to his feet suddenly, with a liiniLle call), slectirg swift,

fiery glances into the lenfy wilderness about him. A catbird uttered its peculiar cry somewhere near. He started violently, looked all about him again in tnat same fierce, stealthy way, then bent toward Edith. "If you value your life, you won't let any' one know you have seen me!" he said in a tone of brutal menace. "I'm in hiding-, but it's from a very different business from that of old Tyrrell's. I only came to let you know I wasn't so dead as you fancied, perhaps, and that I meant to hoid you to your oath, or make you suffer for breaking it. You won't say row you're not atraid of me, eh?" Edith knew in her heart she bad been afraid of him always since that awful night at Heathcote House, but she knew also that it would be most unwise to let him know it. She looked at him, therefore, with calm, steady eyes and faintly curlinglip. "I caii hold myseil to my oath, and should do it, if you were a thousand times dead. If I were afraid of you, Randal, I could protect myself from you in no way so sure as betraying you." He stood staring at her a full minute.

"Do you think so? Well, I couldn't advise you to try it. And mind this, whatever you do, my eye will be on ( you, and wherever you are, when you least expect me, I'll come. You called me the curse of your life once, and by the Eternal! it's what I mean to be! You have blasted my life. Why shouldn't I do what I can to spoil yours?" With the last word, he plunged into the bashes again and vanished like some frightful dream. Dorcas, coming shortly after in search of her mistress, found her almost in a fainting condition. As the old woman helped her back to the house, Edith said: "I shaVt go out to walk alone any more." Dorcas looked at her quickly. "You haven't seen him?" Edith only looked back at her, but the old woman was answered. "Loi3?" she stammered. Edith shook her head sad'y, "God knows!" she said, and then added to herself anxiously: "What could i he have meant by being in hiding?"

CHAPTER XVI. THE PRICE OF HIS INFAMY. Six months passed. Snow covered the ground. Only the evergreens at Blackmere remained green. Edith Tyrrell and Rose Altman still dwelt in the grand, gloomy old mansion. Lord Disbro was deaH, and bis title and all his possessions were Frank Tyrrell's now. "I wonder what made her refuse him?" Rose Altman mused, watching Edith across the drawing-room with malignant eyes. "It's easy to see she's sorry now." There was a pause, then she said aloud: "Edith, isn't it odd how near you have come to being Lady Disbro and missed it?" (To be continued).