HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3199, 27 May 1909, Page 2

HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

CHAPTER XIV.-Continued

Lois had discarded her print bonnet, and appeared in a different aspect this morning. She was no longer the mischievous wood-nymph leading astray the pedestrians whom she mistook for lawyers. Her illfitting clothes were hideously unbecoming, but they could not wholly I conceal the symmetrical proportions [of a very graceful figure; while her face, if touched by the sun ar.d exposure till it had- lost its original delicacy, was both expressive and intelligent. Her features were irregular; but she had the whitest o± teeth peeping through well-curved lips; a saucy chin; a nose which, if not precisely tip-tilted, had an upward curve that gave it more character than if it had been purely Grecian; and a wellshaped head, weighed down with untidy masses of nut-brown hair breaking into silken ripples about her temples. There was no awkwardness in her gestures, thanks to her forest rear-, ing. Whether she walked or stood still, her attitudes were full uf unstudied grace; and Laurence Haydon noted with some satisfaction that her hands and arms, though tawned with exposure to tha weather, were beautifully shaped.

She had blurted out a kind of apology to Wilfred Stuart, induced to do so by the belief that, as the other gentleman was keeping to his bed, he must be very ill; and, attributing his ailments to the fall into the pool, she felt very guilty, and was candid enough to say so. This acknowledgement of her fault, and the kindly manner in which it was received, had set her at ease with Mr Stuart: but she looked askance at Laurence Haydon. There was no indulgence in the gloomy gaze with which he surveyed her, while bruskly announcing himself as her only survivirg parent. The name of father conveyed nothing pleasant to Lois'. The only young girl with whom she had ever been a3suciated had often fled to granny's cottage to escape the ill usage of the tipsy brute whom she and her mother supported with their earnings. It is true that Mr Haydon was a very different person from shoemaker Tom; but he was arrogating the same authority over her.

When gently told that she r ' was Laurence's daughter, Loia laughed incredulously, ...protesting that she wanted no father, and wouldn't have any; but when she met the pity in* glance of Mr Stuart she trembled wrung her hands, and burst inco tears. '

"L have never had anybody belonging to me but granny; she's often said so; then, why must I have one now? She's pilague enough, with her odd ways--sometimes kind and sometimes cross—yet I can get on with her. But a father! Unless it were you sir," and she made Wlfred a rustic curtsy. "I wouldn't mind so much if it were you." "You are my daughter," Laurence told her. "I have been abroad, and, therefore, unable to claim you before. Indeed, I was led to believe that you were dead. But now that I am here I hope"—he knew he ought lo say something affectionate to the young creature who.was listening to him so breathlessly, but the words refused to come'-—"I hope you will prove obedient and—affectionate."

"What do you want me to do for you?" was Lois' doubtful query. "Granny would have me work as hard as she does, and if you're the same "

An appealing look at Mr Stuart induced him to come forward and endeavour to make tha bewildered girl understand her changed prospects. She would be taken to London, to the house of her excellent grandfather, and gradually taught all those accomplishments a general's heiress ought to know: and Wilfred expatiated on the benefits that would accrue to the girl, till, her eyes round and her lips parted with pleasurable astonishment, she broke in with a cry of delight: "If it isn't like the fairy story Hal Dartford used to tell me! I shall be changed from a cinder-wench into a princess! If you're not making fun of me, show me the glass slippers I'm going to wear!"

"You must wait for those till we have civilised you," said Laurence, condescending to be amused at her naivete. "The first lesson you will have to learn is submission."

"I'd rather stop in the forest than learn leasons," she pouted. "Besides, I don't know how granny's to spare me. She's growing old. and can't live here by herself."

Again Wilfred's persuasive powers were called into action, and now Mrs Wakely—who had been standing by for the last few minutescame to his assistance. "If they want to make a lady of you, child, I ought not to stand inthe way of it, and I won't. I'd been thinking I ought to send you away, and maybe this is the best thing thai could happen for both of us. Tom Shoemaker's daughter shall come and live with me, and I shall be like a lady myself on the hundred a year that's promised to me." "If J. don't like it I can come back again," mused Lois; and, though still shrinking from her father, she consented to the arrangement, in

BY HENRIETTA B. EUTHVBN. Author of "His Second Love," " Corydon's Infatuation/' " Daring Doia," " An Unlucky Legacy," Etc., Etc.

( fluenced in no small degree by the knowledge that the first stoppingplace on the journey, was to be Southampton, where she could be provided with more suitable attire. To be as well dressed as the young girls she had seen in one of the shops at Lyndhurst had long been the Height of her ambition; and, when she saw her Sunday gown and hat | cantemptuously rejected by her i father as not fit to be worn by his J daughter, she was more excited than | by the prospect of a good home and education held out by Mr Stuart. Nor was she permitted much time for consideration. Now that introducing her in public was inevitable, Laurence wished it well over, and insisted on departing as soon as a ! vehicle to carry them to Lyndhurst station could be hired from a neighbouring farmer. Mrs Wakely neither kissed nor cried over the young girl now, but stood at her door, grim and dissatisfied wha she went away. "You are taking her against my : will," she said to Laurence; "but unless you are different to what you were, I dare say you'll soon be tired of her and send her back to me. Only, mind ye, I shall look to have the money you promised all the same." "A mercenary old wretch!" Laurence called the woman, as he tossed her a couple of sovereigns and hurrifid Lois into the trap, sharply chiding her for the delay when she would have lingered to say a more particular adieu. "ifou must learn to forget this place and the people you have associated with as quickly as possible," he told her. "I shall reward Mrs Wakely for taking care of you, but you have done with her forever. Lois, was sat beside him, staring straight before her, made no reply; and, the horse being stronn and fresh, the little cottage and the hardfeatured woman in the porch were soon left far behind. But scarcely had they dashed through the street of Lyndhurst when she started from her seat, calling <o the driver to stop.

"Are you mad—do you want to upset us?" demanded her father angrily, as he caught hold of her. "No, lam not mad, but I have changed my mind. You may make a lady of someone else, for I am going back to granny and Hal Dartford." ["to be continued.!