THE DOUBLE SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9620, 13 October 1909, Page 2

THE DOUBLE SECRET.

BY DUNCAN MCGREGOR Author of "Kennedy's Foe," '"lsliiimel Reforms "A Game of Thrue,"' "Edna's Peril," Etc, etc.

CHAPTER V.—Continued. The day after his singular attack, Lord Thomas bade Timball go to the village andjnquire carefully if ar.y stranger had been stopping therel He returned, reporting that at one cottage some one, very "much of a ludy," handsome, about forty years old, who never went out by daylight, had been stopping for some little time, but waa now gone. "She left this morning early, my lord." "To go where?" "She said she was going somewhere in Italy." "After Mr Probyn leaves us, Timball, I shall take the family early to London, to remain all winter." Lord Thomas seemed quite himself on the morning when the whole family came upon the trrrace to bid Dugald Probyn good by and to see him off. It happened that Pauline was standing beside lord Harcourt. Dugald looked back at them as he got into the carriage. "I shall soon be back here to a wedding," he said. "Well, I have no right to object to my couain'a marriage. I shall simply have to carve my own way, and no need to grumble at that, with poor Persis Ormesby's money in my pocket. I wish she had it back." Then another look at Lord Harcuurt's middle age, stately and handsome, and at Pauline's beautiful youth, with the element of graciousness that youth so often lacks.. "It looks a match scarcely suited to so young a girl," he said, "but if she makes it, I'll believe she married for honest love. She reminds me of that verse in Scripture that Lady Astraea wrote in my mother's Bible: 'Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies. The heart of j her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no'need of I spoil.'"

CHAPTER VI

THE KEEPER OF THE SECRET. "I should hava thought," said thn famous MV Pitt to hzi office-seeker. "that a sinecure would have suited you better." "True," replied the applicant; "but only give me .the place, and I'll make it a sinecure." Pauline auon perceived that Lady Astraea desired to make the office of secretary a mere sinecure. ' "Dear Lady Astraea will you give me something to do?" the girl would cry. "My dear, at present really I have nothing ready." "Meanwhile, I have no work to do for you." "Yes, child, but it is so delightful to think there is soma one to do whatever may happen to be needed " Nevertheless, the girl's pertinacity prevailed, and one day Lady Astraea's maid unlocked a desk containing some hundred letters. "There, child," exclaimed Lady Astraea, "since you are so insistent, you shall arrange those letters. They were all written by my daughter-in-law. Arrange them according to date, and make an index of the contents. I am glad to put in your hands letters of a woman so pure and true that to read what she has written would be in itself an education. You will see. that she began to write to me when she was yet a young girl in the care of her governess, long before she had dreamed of being my son's wife. She, my dear Pauline, was the wife I had always desired for my son, and he was her only love; but she also was not his sole passion. I often think with ,gnef and anger of the manner in which young men divide their hearts, and bestow their hasty affections on girls whom they have no reason to believe will be such wives as th3y need, nor even such as their calm judgment would desire. This hot love soon cools, but also it leaves behind it the blighting scars of fire."

Pauline now devoted some hours of each morning to these letters. Lady Astraea taught her an ingenious method of her own lor fastening them together in readiness for being bound. Her ladyship said that after all her letters were in this way made ready for volumes she could find some person who could bind elegantly, accustomed to doing up volumes for amateurs, and this person should come to the Towers and bind documents which she would not trust out of her own hands. In the pale-gold sunlight of November days, Pauline sat in the suite of rooms which had been assigned to her use, called in the plan oi the building the "Hvacnith Rooms," and as she assorted, and read, and indexed the letters of the generous and sunny-tempered girl who had osce occupied the same apartments, the currents of their two lives, so widely divided, appeared to meet and mingle. It seemed aa if the loves, the interests, the opirions of this woman, jvho was so long dead, were flowing on in this stranger who had come to Harcourt Towers. Lady Astraea often came to sit with Pauline as she plied her task, reading the letters and commenting upon them. "My dear daughter-in-law, Pauline ! Harcourt, loved these rooms; she occupied them as a voung girl when vi3iting me. At that time my son was in Eurcpe, and the dear child was accompanied by her governess. Then.

as a young lady of eighteen, she carr.e again with bur mother, my dear friend. I remember how troubled I was because my son's fancy seemed too absorbed in rest upon our guest, and it occurred to me that she was falling unawares into an innocent, unconscious iove for him. She came again for a week after they were betrothed: the encouragement was a very short one. Then as a wife and mistress of he house, she doted on these rooms, and often used them. I remember she used to sit here for hours, sewing on marvellously beauj tiful little garments, before her daughter wa3 born. Into these very rooms, as nearest the scene of her accident, we carried her after that fatal fall, that has overshadowed our house in all these years since it happened. When I see these 'hyacinth rooms' once more opened, I fancy I see her form, and hear her voice. And yet it is not that you are so like her; her figure was less stately, tie pose of her heart less proud, her features less perfect; but oh! my dear, no character could be more lovely than hers—she was embodied goodness " ."Do you know," said Pauline, who loved to hear the old Jlady rambling in the reminiscenqes of her past, "that I often have an odd impression that the Lady Harcourt is still here in these rooms that she loved: as I sit here reading these letters I have an impression of her presence; she seems to pass along these rooms and stand bv the window. Say, did she have a habit of standing by this window, one hand on the sill, the other behind her, looking toward the sea?'' "Her very position!" cried Lady Astraea. "And there, in the search between these two rooms, she often stands, fair-faced, dressed in mourning, between the two violet curtains, the swinging gold of those tassels just above her head; a well made, compact figure, hardly middle size." "Exactly as I have seen her a hundred times when she was in mourning for her mother. How very strange for you to have that feeling of ae.'ing her so plainly." . "You know, I have seen her port- ; rait; I love to look at it. But, Lady ' Astraea do you know I talked once with a gentleman who argued that i when people had much loved and I lived in any certain spot, so that I their heart home was there, their mental personality, that intangible ; being of sentiments and emotions, j which seems cast into our physical ■ frames as in a molr', and takes their shape, will either during life or after death return, a harmless,

tender visitant, to such a phuv, a guest whom we might see if our eyes were not so dulled since Adam fell. He thought that when we meditate so fixedly on a place that we have seen that we again seem to live in its scenes, then this mental personality has gone, tor the tima being, out of our bodies, and superior to time and spues has sought its chosen home." Lady Astraea laughed. "That is too metaphysical and imaginative a theme for me, it would have suited Duga'd Probyn. You should have talked it over with him." I TO BE fIONTINI/ED.i Chamberlain's Stomach and Liver Tablots are purely vegetable, and contain no ingredient that can in any way be injurious io the rucst delicate person. Their action is mild and gentle without any of the painful sensations experienced by the use of Pills. Chamberlain's Stomach and Liver Tablets act as a tonic, strengthen the system, anh assist the natural movsmsnt of the bowels. For sale by all chemists and storekeepers.