THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3090, 12 January 1909, Page 2

THE CURSE OF HER LIFE OR A DARK SECRET.

CHAPTER XVl.—Continued. Editi caught her breath sharply. Rose was always making such speeches &s this, but she could never become indifferent to them. It was like the stab of a knife every time. "Perhaps so," she answered, after a moment, in a careless voice. Edith was quite herself again, the self, that is to say, that she had been ever since the tragedy at Heathcote House. That exquisite white beauty of hers was more dazzling than ever, but she seldom smiled. ! She had never told any one, save Dorcas, of her meeting with Randall Heathcote, and in all the six months just gone no news had come of him or poor Lois. In her heart Edith believed that Lois was dead. "If I thought she was living, and in his power," she said often to herself, with set lips, "I'd go to Heathcote House and ransack it from garret to cellar to find her, much as I hate and fear the place!" "Why don't you go away from Blackmere yourself, Miss Edy, and leave it to Miss Altman? She likes it so well," old Dorcas remarked sometimes, """oil might travel far away from here, where you could have some pleasure cf your life. You just stay here and brood and brood, and grow old anticipating trouble." Edith smiled faintly. "Foolish Dorcas," she said, patting the old woman's withered hand with her own soft, white lingers. "You know why I don't go. You know how I would like it. Ah! it would be such happiness to be where T need not ffcel Rose's cruel, malignant eyes on me any hour in the day. Shall I ever be relieved of her in this world, I wonder? I give you my word, Dorcas, I've thought seriously sometimes of forsaking everything—the fortune she grudges me, Blackmere, you, my own name. I'd be willing to sweep streets for a living, if I could only get away from Rose Altman and be the gay, carefree, happy-hearted girl I was before I ever thought of marrying any one." "Why don't you do it, then? Take the money with you, and go away from here and from her. What's to hinder you?" "I'll tell you, Dorcas, though you know already. I don't do it because while I am here I am a restraint upon Rose, though she doesn't know it, doesn't realise it, that is. If I were out of the way, go into such a thorough raking over of that bad business at Heathcote that somebody would have to suffer. I believe that she'd have me arrested for tie murder, out of sheer malignancy, if 1 were to leave Blackmere and not take her with me." "I'm not sure but it would be a good thing. They could not harm you." "We don't know that. That affair was never properly explained, Dorcas. If it had been, if even Rose Jiad told all she knew, or even guessed, the case would have looked pretty black for me." "No matter. The truth would have had to come out then." "How? Randal would never tell it, aid I couldn't." "Not if you had to choose between telling and dying?" "Not even then. It wouldn't be likely to come to that. The evidence against me is only circumstantial. But if it did, I shouldn't tell. I took a solemn oath not to tell." "Then all I've got to say," exclaimed Dorcas indignantly, "is that it's lucky for you that you told everything in that fever." Euith looked at the excited ok 3 woman a moment, a curious tenderness in her handsome eyes. "You promised me that should be as if you had never heard it," she said, "and you know you think as much of your word as Ido of mine. Besides, 1 don't really think your testimony, uncorroborated by me, and based on the mere delirium of fever, would be accepted in a court of law. Do you?" Just one week before Christmas, Miss Altman held a private and otherwise singular interview with a person who came to Blackmere after dark, bribed a servant to take a note from him to her, and afterward waited in the snow-laden shrubbery gomething like half an hour. In about that time Miss Altman, well wrapped and looking pale with eagerness, came out. She held a crumpled note in her hand. "Did you send me this?" she demanded, showing it, "and can you do what you say in it? Wait; come this way, lower down the walk. Now, what do you mean?" The person she addressed was tall, thin, and dark. He had little, intensely bright black eyes, deep sunken in his head. His mouth looked like a slit in his face. It was James Rial—in fihort, the man who had been Randal Heathcote's valet, at the time of Captain Tyrrell's murder. He was his valet yet, perhaps, if Heathcote was living, which nobody knew. He had not been with him, however, at Blackmere. Bright as his eyes always were, they shone like fiery sparks now in the dim evening light. "I mean what I said in the note," he answered, his thin lips parting in a cunning smile. "I mean that I J can destroy, the woman you hate!" Rose's ugly face reddened with de> light. , "I don't believe you," she said, looking at him suspiciously. "How do you know I hate anybody? Who is it?" "It's your grandfather's widow," rej lied the man. Hose reddened again, and a flash of hatred shot from her pale eyes. "Well," she said, "go on, if you've *.»„ thing to tell."

liy HELEN COBWIN PIERCE, Author oi; "At His Own Game," "Carrie Euwivon \Vilde," "Badly .Matched," "The Caeattd Bride/' Etc.

"But there are conditions," the man answered. "I can help you to the proof that she killed Captain Tyrrell, with her own hand!" "She did do it, then!" Rose cried eagerly. "I knew it'" Rial smiled again in his pinched, mechanical way. "I shall tell you nothing. Miss Altman, till you have neanl and subscribed to my conditions." "Why haven't you spoken before? You must have known all the time. V. iiy didn't you tell at the inquest? Oh, I ahvay said she did it! I always knew it was she, the wicked creature! Why didn't you speak before?" "I haven't spoken yet, Miss Altman, and I shan't till I know I'm sur? of my price," the man rejoined boldly. He spoke with such significance, with such almost insolence of tone and look, th?t Rose, who, with all her meanness and vulgarity, was an aristocrat to the core, drew back and looked at him in cold surprise. "You shall be made to speak, Mr Rial. Now that I know you can reveal the awful secret of that night, you shall be made to speak," she said arrogantly. He smiled insolently. "How made, miss?" "By the law." He shook his head, still smiling disagreeably. "The law can't touch me. I don't fear it in the least. Appeal to the law in this business, Miss Altman, except, of course, as I consent to it, and 7. will swear positively to Mrs Tyrrell's innocence. How would you like that?" Rose was silent. She would not like it at all. "But," she said at last, "you dare not do that. It would be perjury." "How do you know it would?" he said, still more familiarly than he had spoken yet. , Miss Altman opened her small ; eyes to their widest and stared at | him. j "Why, of course it would, if she's , guilty." j The man came close to her, and , spoke in a low tone. I "How do you know she is guilty? I You've only got my word for it." I It took her full th'-ee minutes to ! cumprehend his meaning.. But it I dawned upon her at last, and a dull, j sickly pallor drove the red from her face. Her eyes dilated with fright, then fell, unable to bear even his i look in that moment's bargaining I with her own conscience. ! For Rose Altman, badly as she hated her step-gandmama, had some conscience about how she indulged her hatred. She was not quite prepared to go to the length of accusing ' her of a crime of which she was not guilty. (To be continued). Sickness causes a loss of both time and money. Yoa lose time and have expensed: medical attendance, entailing a double loss. This can be avoided by using a reliable remedy at the first stage of the sickness. The purchase of a bottle of Chamberlain's Colic, Cholera and Diarrhoea Remedy often proves a profitable investment, for, by its use at the first appearance, any unusual looseness of the bowels, a severe attack of diarrhoea or dysentery maybe averted that mijrht otherwise compel a week's cessation from labour. Every household should have a bottle at' band. It never fails, and is pleasant to take. Get it to-day. It may ave a life. For sale by all chemists torekecpers.