HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3213, 12 June 1909, Page 2

HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

2* BY HENRIETTA B. RUTHVEN. ? I Author of "His Second Love," " Corydon's Infatuation/' v C 5 Z " Daring Doia," " An Unlucky Legacy, Jf / Etc., Etc. /

CHAPTER XXlll.—Continued. Laurence went up-stairs to pay his morning visit to the general, who was still too feeble to resume his ordinary active habits; but he did not stay long. Always uneasy under the mild but searching gaze of his father, he was still more so when Nurse May and Lois were present. And yet he would not let them go away, lest the general should take the'opportunity and question him respecting the very large sums of money he was always contriving to get rid of, though he could scarcely tell how. "I have an engagement," ho said affecting to look at his watch; "but this evening, sir. :f you will be at leisure, I should like to tell you, more fully than 1 can spare time to do now, what lam planning for Lois. At present she is wasting her time, as even you must admit." He did not wait for a reply, but went away, satisfied with having taken the first step toward procuring the banishment of the daughter whose presence here was a continual eyesore. At the door he found a very elegant victoria, just home from the makers, and drawn by a pair of small but spirited ponies. A young fellow, upright as a soldier, yet with none of the stiff bearing of a military man, his features smooth and boyish, yet full of spirit and energy, was standing at the ponies' heads, settling their harness, patting them, and talking to them in the manner of one who loved the dumb creatures too well to ill use them. Laurence paused to admire the handsome turnout, and his eyes wandred from the equipage to the youth in charge of it. The look was met fearlessly, yet not rudely; and the respectful lift ng of his cap, when courteously addressed, was so far removed from servility that it might have been a greeting from equal to equal. V, N "Whose carriage is this?" "General Haydon's." Bought, of course, to gratify Lois' often expressed wish that she could drive hei grandfather out h»relf. "And you?" "1 am engaged to look after the ponie3 and Miss Havd'>n'9 mare." . Miss Haydon's mare! Was this another concession to Lois' unfeminine tastes? Frowning as he went, Laurence walked away, vexed in his secret soul at these proofs that the girl was winning her way into the affection of her crandsire. He was scarcely out of sight when a whisper from the general sent Lois down-stairs, wondering not a little what she should find there awaiting her. She was flying across the hall at sigh of the ponies, when her joyful glance lell upon the young man who was carefully curbing their impatience. She drew her hand across her eyes, then looked again. Ah, it was no mistake! it was —yes, it was Hal Dartford!

CHAPTER XXVI. LiOS IS TAUGHT AN IMPORTANT^LESSQN., The joyful impulse that prompted Lois to spring forward and greet her old acquaintance warmly was checked, not by her pride only, by deeper feelings to which she would have been puzzled to give a name, so varied were they—so tumultuous. What had brought him here? Was it his interest in her, or was t merely one of those odd turns of fortune which we call chance or accident? In their childhood„ she and Hal Dartford had been cloae friends, quarreling frequently, but only ( to phtch it up again, and always make common cause against the rougher children of the village, when, as was too often the case, they took a malicious pleasure in teasing the boy whose tastes, and habits were not as rude as theirs. But when Hal's pleasant face and intelligence attracted the old clergyman, arid he because an inmate of the vicarage. he and Lois had drifted apart. The boy was holding daily intercourse with an educated man; the girl was either helping Granny Wakely in her course toil, or fliyng in to the forest to escape her blows and scolding. When they did meet, Lois, dimly conscious that he was rising above her, and taunted by better dressed girls with her shabby garments and her granny's miserly ways, was stung into flouting him in rejecting all his efforts to come to a better understanding. If he bore this good-naturedly ahe was as ill pleased as if he walked away in silence, scarcely realizing that it was with herself, and with her own shortcomings, she was more irritated than with him. She had never said even to herself that she loved him, for Lois, brought up with the utmost sim plicitly, was younger in some respects than her years, and would have been ashamed for anyone to suspect how her heart ached when the smartly dressed daughter of the landlord came down the street beside Hal Dartford, smiling up in his any laying a ringed hand on his arm to enforce attention to what she was/saying. From this moment an estrangement had sprung up between them; yet,

in spite of this detested damsel's attractions, he was here, and Lois-in a flutter of ecstasy. Yet she scorned to let him know it; and thuugh her cheeks burned, and her eyes were dancing and sparkling behind the lids demurely veiling them, she walked to the door with great apparent coolness and deliberation. "Good morning," she said, witht a very fair imitation of Lady Marcia's condescending tone to inferiors. "So you have carried out your plan and come to live in London?" Hal Dartford had doffed his cap at her approach. She could feel rather tnan see that he was taking i note of every change the short separation had effected in her; but whether in approval or regret she could not tell, for his manuer was happy blending of the frank and deferential. "My dear old master died the week before last, and there was nothing to keep me in the neighbourhood after I lost—him." "Did he leave you a fortune, as granny always said he would?" Lois queried eagerly. "He left me his books; he had little else to leave. What small sum there may be left after his debts are paid will be given to the poor of the parish." "Who told you I was here?" was her next question. "Granny?" "Mrs Wakely refused to tell me anything about you," was the rely; but he voluntaered no further information, and something—was it a tremulous dread of what his answer might reveal? deteried Lois from pursuing her interrogatories. "Does—does granny miss me very much?" "I suppose so; but 1 have only seen her once." A footstep somewhere near reminded Lois that at any moment they might be interrupted, and she glanced from Hal to the ponies. "Did you bring thesa for my grandfather to see?—l will go am tell him."- » But he stopped her as she made a feint of .departure. "They are here for your inspection. The general bought them yesterday, and —he has engaged me to look after them." "I'm glad—glad! Now you will live here; and there isn't any one in the world kinder than my grandfather!" cried Lois, forgetting all her dignity. "But"—and now she j surveyed the young man anxiously— i "can't you get something better to j do? With all your book-lerning you ought to be able." | TO BE CONTINUED.!