THE DOUBLE SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9598, 18 September 1909, Page 2

THE DOUBLE SECRET.

CHAPTER I.—Continued,

"Lady Astraea! you love my—you love Persis. You know how entirely devoted she has been to tne, how she has been ceaseless in her cares and patience—what a debt of cratitude I owe her." "Yes, she is a pattern to all daughters." Mrs Ormesby winced; then spoke eagerly: "And if what I have to say should harm her after all the gatitt.de I owe her, if I should pay my debt by destroying her and all her future, should I spe&k?" "Charlotte," said Lady Astraea, "you cannot destroy Persia herself so long as she herself is guiltless. You cannot destroy her future, for she is capable of creating a future for herself. No, Charlotte, if you have wronged any one for Persis' sake, you wrong both her and yourself by, in your silence, suffering her to go on innocently perpetuating a wrong of which you knowingly were guilty, I warn you Charlotte, Persis will be no better off if you persist in wrong for her sake, for a curse follows crime and a blessing follow right. "I cannot understand what you mean; but let me tell you one thine that I read in your eyes -you are not Charlotte, silent from love of Persis, but from your own pride, that revolts at concessions, and from bitterness against some fellow creature." And here the Honourable Charlotte Ormesby's last refuge was swept away from her. Again that despairing, grasping motion; then she spoke meditatively: "Bitterness I should have buried in the grave, where lam going. Death took my enemy years ago." Lady Astraea sat silent. She was resolved to urge no more. "You wrest my secret from me!" cried Charlotte angrily. " Your eyes demand it; they tell me to give up what I have hidden so long—so long!" „ , Lady Astraea looked out of the window. "You force me to speak," persisted Mrs Ormesby. "I neither force nor wrest," sa:d Lady Astraea; "this is the mastervote of your conscience." Mrs Ormesby shrank back, her lips set, her eyts glowing. So might the tiger whose skin covered her feet have looked in his last battle, wounded unto death, but wrathful even with the arrow in his heart. Then her form relaxed from its teribion, she drew a detp inspiration; her clenchtd hands opened and fell apart. "Ihen, Conscience, get.your way at last!" she cried. "Lady Astraea, Presis is not my daughter!" "Not your daughter! Whose daughter, then. Is she?" "I do not know." "And where is your own daughter? You had one. Woman, are you raving? You must be. Why, you remember when Persis was born. You were going to, your husband's house in Lyme Regis and I was on my way to one ot my dower bome3 in Devon, and we travelled in our carriages You were taken ill at a little village Tydegate —thirty miles from Lyme Regie, right at the foot of Devon hills. Your maid was foolish and frightened, and the country doctor, my woman Birkin and myself were the only ones with yuu when Persis was bom. I remember she had a mole on her right arm, half-way between elbow and wrist, and I said it was in a good place for a braclet to cover" (Lady Astraea was no longer young, and she occasionally indulged in reminiscences); "and," she added, "you told me since that you had the mole cut off.- lest it should mar her beauty." "And the excision left noacar! sneered Mrs Ormesby.

Lady Astraea flushed a little. Perhaps she had been easily beguiled; but as to the pure all things are pure, so guiltless and honest hearts are not on the lookout for deceit. "And this child?" questioned Lady Astraea. "Is not the child that was born in Lyme Regis." "Where, then is that child?" "Dead these fifteen years. She died on her third birthday." "And where?" "In a little eight-roomed cottage at a hamlet called Norburywain, on the river Tyne." "And where did you get this child?" "In a little eight-roomed cottage at a hamlet cal ed Norburywain, on the river Tyne," repeated Mrs Ormesby, as one saying a lesson — an unpleasing lesson. "And you substituted one child for the other—living for dead?" "Yes, exactly." "And why?" "So that Peter Probyn should not get the hundred thousand pounds of the Ormesby property that he was pining for. And he didn't get ithe died without it!" she triumphantly cried, lifting herself a little from her pillow. "I got the better of him!" "And for that—to secure that end, you—you " Lady Astraea had compassion on the sick woman; she would not say, "you for fifteen years lived a lie." "Yes, for that—because V I hated him!" cried Mrs Ormesby.

BY DUNCAN McGREGOR Author of "Kennedy's Foe," '•lshiuael Eeformed," "A Game of Three," "Edna's Peril." Etc, etc.

''He was a very disagreeable man," said her ladyship. "He was more than that to me; I loathed .him! He insulted me grossly, and—he paid for it, too!" Mrs Ormesby was panting with excitement. "Compose yourself," said Lady Astraea. " Whab is this child's name"? You have called her for y u ur own child; what is the truth?" "Her name is Pauline." "Why, that is the same as my grand-daughter's. What is the other name?" "I do not know. Her mother, the person of whom I got her, called her • self Martin, but she told me that this was not her true name. She looked a laiy.. with a dash of the gipsy or actress, something of that kind. I suppose her child was -illegitimate."HJ ;;. %£%£.. A sharp cry broke into the room, a cry of anger, pain and protest. The two women looked hastily about, and there standing white between the divided crimson curtains, like some Parian statue of dismay, stood the girl of whom they were speaking, the girl until now called Persis Ormesby, and now 3aid to be Pauline Nothing. She had been asleep and her brown hair fell in dishevelled.waves over her shoulders; two snowy arms held apart the crimson drapery; her head was drawn up and back,* as if resenting the imputation of her birth; her lips parted by that protesting cry, her face and eyes terrified, with her first strange glimpse into a future of lonely disgrace. "There! there!" L cried Mrs Ormesby shrilly. "Lady Astraea, this is your doing! I thought when I tM you all that you would say, *G*> on hiding it—to tell it would be cruelcarry your secret to the grave.' But now—now, she has heard, she knows all the cruel story. Poor child! this is my gratitude; this is the way I pay my debts pay you for your patience, and care, asd devotion. Why—why did I speak? Come, let us take it all back, and keeping silence it shall be as if it had never been said." "No," said the girl, gathering all her strength, dropping the curtain, and coming forward into the room, "that cannot be, ma; madam, it cannot be, for Mr David Probyn's son is living; and what was withheld from the father is his. Now that I know it is his, ' I cannot touch it, or keep it by my silence. I could not lie for a hundred thoA sand pounds." m I TO JUS CONTINUED.]