THE DOUBLE SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9643, 8 November 1909, Page 2

THE DOUBLE SECRET.

CHAPTER Xll.—Continued

"She is here in bed; but yhe must have been much alarmed; she has faintnd." "Oh, thank God, she is there! What shall I do for her?" "Noth ng: if she is not better presently I shall call Birkin." Pauline did not notice the stir below, the bringine: of lanterns, the searching of the grounds, the bringing in of Glacomo, and the wild tales he told. Anxious not to call Birkin, she laboured, aided by Lucy, to re store her friend, and at last Lady Lina's blue eyes opened, and she looked listlessly about. Then recollection came back, she strove to rise, her blue eyes grew dark and wild with terror.

"Let me go! I heard firing! he is killed! m.- own Granitto!" "You cannot go," said Pauline, firmy; "ann I think no one is killed." "Then he is captured, he will be misunderstood, disgraced! Oh, Pauline, I will go to him—my darling Granitto!" "Lina!" cried Pauline, "tell me were you out there to meet him" "Yes, I was, I was, and I meant to marry him. Oh, I wish I had gone last night, as he begged me to. Oh, Graniuo, my Granitto!" Pauline dropped into a chair, overwhelmed at this revelation. Then she remembered that this would never do, that Lady Lina would betray herself, and break the hearts oi heriamily; or with her frail physique and high-strung temperament, she might go mad, or into a brain fever. She bent over Lina and took her hands.

"Hush, hush, my darling! You do not know what you are saying; you betray yourself and him. Lina, listen; lie still, and I will go and see your lather and find out all about this, and teli you exactly what has happened." Pauline put on a rosecoloured cashmere wrapper of LadyJ Lina's, gathered her hair up in a silk net, and tied a lace veil about her head, in order to appear with some propriety of costume before the assembltd family. She turned toward Lina with a reassuring smile, and the girl could not help exclaiming: "You look beautiful as an angel!"

So thought Dugald Probyn, as she met him at the iiot ol the stair: he had made some atk itions to his hasty toilet, ai;d was going to Lord Harcourt's private study, where Timbell and Hadley had conducted Glacomo, whom they had found lying half senseless by the warden wall Ted, in an agony lest 'Como might reveal something detrimental to Lady Lina and Lucy, lollowed, racking his brains for something' to cover their traces, «nd most of the ,other servants, except Birkin, crowded around the door to hear what was the matter. Dugald gave Pauline his arm and led her into the room toward Lord Harcourt. The. remarkable beauty and suitability ef the your.g pair to each other struck his lordship even in that hour of excitement, and recalled to him a favourite painting of a pair of lovers going together to ask the parental consent to their betrothals-

"Lord Harcourt," said Pauline, "Lady Lina's much better, but ex • ceedingly alarmed*, she heard firing, and is sure that some one is killed, and she cannot rest until I find out all about it."

"Exactly what I am trying to do,"' said Lord; Harcourt, vastly relieved about his daughter; "and Miss Percy, if you will wait here while I question this man, I think that you will be able to t< II Li ha all that she desires to know. Now, Glacomo, what about this busintss"

'Como had been fortified with a quart of wine, and secure in the absence of ghosts, and the presence of stalwart Engiishmen, he recovered courage and fluency; and told his story of the contemplated robbery and murder.

There had been a comical side to the night's adventures, even to those who did not understand the "true inwardness" of these events; Lord Harcourt, who at first had been terribly alarmed lest his daughter might have had some share in the invasion of his grounds, and Dugald Probyn, who felt sure that there had betn an attempt to rob the vtfla, went to bed and to sleep with a broad smile on their faces.

Now, though Lord Harcourt closed his eyes for slumber with a smile on his face s in art hour or two he was awake arid as restless as ever. The events of the night had left a very painful impression on him, and with the first dawn he rose, dressed himself and went out. He left the inner wall by the lodge of Madzo, and, reaching the vineyard wall some rods away from the gatp, ,he ascended it by a little ladder planted there, ana stood upon the top to view the country. The vinedresser's wife came from the gate and stopped a carrier's cart that was going with fruit and fowls to the market of Florence. Then the carrier hrade room on the seat beside him and in the back of the cart, and the vinekeeper's wife brought out an English looking portmanteau and put it in toe cart, and then came a woman's figure, veiled

BY DUNCAN MeGREGOR Author of "Kennedy's Foe," '•lshmael Eeforme "A Game of Three," "Edna's Peril." Etc., eta.

and dressed coarsely in black, but distinguished even in the dim morning light for ditrnity and grace of motion and outline; who that had seen the lofty pose of that head, the majesty of the step could forget it? Not Lord Harcourt, and he stood fairly appalled at seeing the woman for whom he had left England, here standing at the gate of his Italian villa. He stepped back from the wall to the ladder, to lemain unseen until the carrier's cart was rattling down she hill toward Florence. Then he went home to his study,

Here was a new complication, as Mrs ViJtherpe would say. Agnes Clifford, who ha I vowed to be revenged on him, seemed following the very line of revenge which he most dreaded She was pursuing his child, doubtless to beguile her into some miserable marriage. She had lived at the vinedresser's as long as he had at the villa, and during that time Lina had received Granitto Arriano in ihe guise of a teacher, and this last night's disturbance was doubt; less caused by this same Arriano. Was he corning by his daughter's appointment? Was -she in the habit of meeting him? Why had this woman fled? tie paced his study in great confusion of mind. Presently there was a knock on the door, and Hadley entered. "My lord, I found this pistol lying inside the south wall, near the scene of the disturbance of last night; the silver plate has a name."

Lord Harcourt knew what the name was before he read it —Granitto Marie Arriano.

A little later enter Dugald, Timball and Norton.

"My lord! last night's work was not so harmless as we had thought, probably murder was committed. The red fez cap of Madzo, the gatekeeper, was fund lying outside the wall in ajittle pool of blood. Madzo has disappeared. His body seems to have been carried away, for there are marks of footsteps through the vineyard, and as far as the road, where they ara lost among the tracks of be&sts and carts going all night to the city market; but part of the way, these footsteps, which seem tu be of men carrying something, are accompanied by drops of blood."

Lord Harcourt dismissed the servants, showed the pistol to Dugald Probyn. "I cannot understand this," said Dugald. "I supposed that Granitto was a gentieman and a scholar. He is of good family, and has fortune enough for his small needs." "I must tell you in confidence," said Lord Harcourt, "that since we have been in this villa be came here disguited as an old man to be an Italian teacher. His .iiseuise was discovered, and he immediately disappeared. He means some harm." "He certainly must have heen here last night," tsaid Duga.'d. "We must take instant steps against him. I wiil go into r'lortnce, and lay the case before the British Consul, and inform the police. A Briitsh citizen and peer cannot be' thus trespassed upon." "Yes," cried Lord Harcourt, feelijig that pursuing Granitto as a criminal would be the surest means of delivering his daughter lrotn his snares, "take every pains to bring ihis villain to justice."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE BITTERNESS OF THE SECRET.

Lord Thomas spoke bitter things against Granitto ftlarie Arriano, putting the worst possible construction on all that had happened, intending thereby to sentence any lingering romance that hia daughter might have for the young Italian. He trusted to the pride which he supposed Lina must inherit from him, to lead her to crush any fancy for one now an outlaw with the stain of blood upon him. Now, while Lina had in her disposition none of this pride on which Lord Harcourt reckoned, and instead of half gipsy wildness and passion for the unconventional, which was this pride's very opposite, she had heired from somewhere a remarkable softness and tenderness of feeling which shrank from nothing so much as the thought of death or killing. If it had ever been her lot to enter a slaughter house or a butcher's shop she would have eaten no more meat while the world stood, but not having entered these places it did not occur to her to associate lamb chop and cutlets with creatures that gam • boled aroud the pastures, and made such pretty duncoloured groups in a landscape. What she had seen and heard during the night scene in the garden did not leave on her mind a doubt thatArriano nad shot poor Madzo, and from Arriano who had done this terrible deed her verv soul shivered away in terrior. Pauline realised that while Lord Harcourt's words might speak the doom of her friend's love fancies, they might also be a death blow to Lina herself. 1 TO BTS OONTINtTEp. ]