THE DOUBLE SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9612, 5 October 1909, Page 2

THE DOUBLE SECRET.

CHAPTER IV.—Continued. The girl henrd '.he remark, and a sudden flush of wounded feeling, a peculiar tremor of lip and eyelid, passed over her face, and then her figure drew up even with more than its usual pride, her head took a loftier poise. Lord Harcourt remarked this; it touched him with a singular double likeness, transient, inexplicable, nevertheless it did touch him. He stepped forward, saying, in his very stateliest tones: "Mrs Vikhorpe, allow rne to present my young friend and relative, my mother's ward, Miss Percy.'' Then, with a low bow. he offered his arm to Pauline, saying: "Allow me to conduct you to Lady Astraea." Pauline went away with him, leaving Lady Lina still tantalising her aunt with unheard of heresies on the question of dressing for dinner. However, when she came down to the drawing room before dinner, the chess queen was an enchanting vision in pale blue silk,folds of cobweb lace, Ted's bouquets on hair, throat and belt, puffs and curls, a floating wealth of auburn and gold. The daughter of the house of Harcourt was a very beautiful daughter indeed. Lord Thomas gave his arm to his mother, the newly arrived young Vilthorpe dutifully escorted his aunt, there were no other guests that day, and Lady Lina in blue, and Pauline in black, went down to gether. Pauline not wondering at the long £list of adorers of the charming damsel of her side. As soon .as they took their seats and Lord Harcourt was ready with the highest dignity to say grace, Miss Lina whispered in Pauline's ear: "That &cion of an excellent family has much too long a neck." And all through dinner there waH a running fire of sotto voice remarks. "How will he look as Bishop, with such a round head? I am sure canonicals will never become him, his head waggles just like my new rook. Somebody on my side must mo- e down and sweep that prospective bishop off." . After dinner they adjourned to the pa'lor, where Pauline did her best to make the piano discourse most delightful music. Time passed, and in a week Pauline had fairly settled into the life of Harcourt Towers. She took horseback rides with Lady Lina and snme of her admirer?, Lord Thomas acting as guan ian through Fairy lea Glen, and out to Batile Abbey. They went in the carriage to Hastings, chaperoned by Lady Astraea and Mrs Vilthorpe, and bathed in the sea. They had picnics and sailing parties, projected by Lady Lina, and confined nearly to the limits of the family party out of consideration ior Pauline's mourning. Mrs Vilthorpe regarded su-.h concessions with disfavor, and remarked that "really Lord Harcourt was very particular in his attentions to Mis 3 Percy." Almost every day admirers of Lady Lina, new admirers or old admirers, speaking both in regard to age, and to the length of their passion, appeared upon the scene. Lord Thomas saemed possessed by far more than ordinary parental anxitty about his child. He felt as if Nemesia were in pursuit of him, and intendit g to strike him in some strange and terrible manner through her, his only descendant. He considered her heedless and versatile disposition, and wisely determined that she needed a counterpoise in her husbar.d, and chose for her ! young men to fill his idea of what was needed, without any regard to what she wanttd. Failing Dugald Probyn his heir-at-law, his next choice would be Mr Norton Ponsonby, son and heir of the Earl of Aylesford, To fill up the time before Dugald should come from Florence for an autumn visit, and to keep ineligible suiton away, Lord Thomas wisely summoned Mr Ponsonby from his father's south coast home. And now behold the infatuation and idiocy of these guardians of a fantastic, wilful girl The luckless Ponsonby was not left to commend himself by any of his good qualities. "My dear Lina," said the father, pacing with her on the terrace. "I hope you like Mr [Ponsonby, he is a very superior young man." "He looks just like _a pound of butter," retorts the terrible enfant, and speaks just like a pound ot butter, too, as if he were melting and running away; every moment that I look at him I expect to see him gone. I never liked butter." What wonder that the disappointed Lord Thomas dropped his daughter's restless white hand from j his arm, and found consolation in a promenade with Pauline, a girl who was reading to his mother a French work on crustaceans, and could discuss with him harmonies of color as exhibited in a crab s carapax and claws. Lady Lina having left what she merrily styled these "crabbed people" to themselves, straightway drifted into the jaws of that scylla, her Aunt Vilthorpe. "My dear girl, you hardly spoke to Mr Ponsonby at dinner. Do you not think he has a noble head'?' "What! call thit vast red expanse a noble head? It looks like an outcropping of the old red sandstone,

V BY DUNCAN MoQEEGOR ) {, Author of "Kennedy's Foe," 'Tshmael Eeforuie V "A Game of Threo,"' "Edna's Peril," / Etc, etc.

[with one poor little lost bramble bush astray in it. What an anomaly of nature is a bald-headed young man. As for being a young man, he looks to me as if he ought to be in long clothe?, and in charge of a nurse, he is so bald and red." "My dear Lina ! your remarks are hardly decent." "Aren't they?" cries Lina. "Oh, lam sure grandmama needs me to find her handkerchief; she has dropped it." And off darted Lina, not so much devoted to attendance on her grand mama, as because Mr Ponsonby was drawing near. Then begins the inlatuated Lady Astraea, of whom one would really have hoped better things: • "My dear Lina, what a very refined young gentleman Mr Ponsonby is-so like his father, the Earl of Aylesford." "I should think the earl must have been ,obliged to marry the house' maid, for I don't know who else would havj had him if he was like his son. That young man remarked to me at dinner that he thought moonlight was so sweet." "Marry the housemaid?" cried Lady Astraea aghast. "My dear Lina? why, the earl once offered himself to me." "And you wouldn't have him, dear grandmama. Showed your good sense, vltich I have inherited." "I refused him because, because "Because you preferred to marry a man. I don't blame you, grandmama! Who'd I have been if you had married the earl?" They were three of them to guide this damsel through the mazes of life and this is how they were succeeding. "I cannot hear you speak so slightingly of the earl," saiJ Lady Astraea stiffly. "Heaven made him, so let him pass for a man!" quoted Lady Lira from Portia, and sodanced off after her poodle. But while thus depreciating the ; Honourable Mrj Ponsonby Lady Lina' could not for her life refrain from giving him geniaLsmiles and amiable words. Mi- Ponsonby admired pansies above all flowers, and Lina discovered at once that they became her. She made him unutterably happy one day by finding fault with his empty button, from which the geranium leaves had fallen, and then supplying the lack of a neat knot from one of her own sapphire-lined ribbona. But bitterness mingled with Mr Ponsonby's joy, for in lese tnan ten minutes Fred bioughtup the haltHedged rook to be inspected by its mistress, and she cut a second puce from that same ribbon, and beautified that little monstrosity's neck. Shortly after the poodh arrived upon the scene, and as his neck ribbon was soiled she tcok the remainder of the blue streamer, and tied it in a neat bow among his white wool. "How nice you all look!" saiJthe saucy crea'.ure, sending a radiant glance around the party, including rook, poodle, and the Honourable Frederick. "I always am impartial in conferring my favours." "You have conferred none on me," said young Brinkham, a blushing youth, gifted in quoit, and cricket, and hard riding. "See how ridiculously my sleeve looks without that bow," said Lina meditatively. "Mr Brinkham, you go and bring me a llower to put in i£i place." . I TO BE CONTINUED.]