FIGHTING HER WAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 981, 26 February 1910, Page 2

FIGHTING HER WAY.

CHAPTER XXVII. —Continued

'Cannot you see and understand that I yearn to have you tell me it ia myself you have missed, and are pining for, my little love?' he cried tenderly, as he took her face between his hands and devoured it with his eyes. She loosed herself from him, and exclaimed with amazement and pain mingled: 'Uh, Doctor Alcoc, what can you mean?' 'How can you ask, Christine? Do you not see and feel that I love and have longed for you till all my being ia at your dear ieet? I want you for my wife, dear, never to lose you from my life again. May I have you, Christine?' 'But do you not love—have you not always loved—and are you not to marry Doctor Howard' 3 daughter?' she asked wonderingly, thinking less of what he had just said than of Doctor Howard's letter. 'What? Little Jeanie? Bless your heart, what put such a notion in your head, child? Jeanie and I have never had a thought of each other save as brother and sister, love. She would think it as absurd as I do to hear

your question.' 'But her father told me so!' Then he lied to you. There is not, and never has Been, a shadow oi ground for such a statement, and my heart is wholly and loyally your own —how wholly, how truly. I never guessed til! I sought you this morning.' 'Oh, do not say so! It will break my heart to think I have made you unhappy after all your goodness to me!' cried Christine, in an imploring way. Utterly mistaking her meaning, and, still hugging the belief that she returned his affection, he smiled caressingly as he took her hand and said softly: '1 have indeed been most unhappy about you; but now that I have found you my grief is changed into gladness. You will be always near me, always my very own hereafter, will you nut, my sweet, pure flower?' 'Ah, what have I done to deserve the punishment of hurting all whom I care for, and who have been my friends?' It was a heart wail full of anguish that the girl uttered as she turned herself from his pleading eyes, and held her face in her hands. At last the truth began to dawn on him—she was going to reject him. His countenance turned ashen as he hope in his heart fell to ruin. He said in at despairing way: 'Christine, are you going to send me from you? Can you be so cruel? Child, what need part us? Surely your pride will not do me this wrong?' 'Hush! hush! you make me feel like a criminal. I should do you the deepest and deadliest wrong did I not send you from me at once and finally. Oh, Doctor Alcot, hear my confession, and pity me. I, too, lovelove hopelessly. We' are companions in the same aad misery; let us help one another to hear it!' He stood for a moment gazing on her, as if he did not quite comprehend her words, as if he could not biing himself to believe them, but the anguish in her quivering face left him no room for doubt. He asked huskily: 'Who is it that; has ruined your life?' 'Do not ask me—only know this: 1 love the best and noblest man on earth, and am beloved by him. He would give his life to make me, happy. It is I who have decreed our separstion—or, rather, Fate has de- J creed for both of us. Can it help you j to know that my poor heart re-echoes every pulse of your pain—that I have suffered and conquered the anguish that rends you now?' The tenderness of the man rose superior to the passion of the lover in Fred Alcot's noble nature, for the time he forgot himself to comfort the weak woman that claimed his forbearance and compassion. He came near to her and touched her bowed head with a reverent hand, as he said very gently: 'Nothing that hurts you can help me, dear little woman. God knows I'd gladly heal your wounds with my heart's best blood. I love you too well to make you suffer. Since we cannot be more, we shall be dear friends. Look up and call me brother, i Can't you, Christine?' j 'How good and grand you are, my j brother!' sho cried. Through her. tears a radiant smile shone out, mak- | ing a rainbow light about her lovely I eyes, as impulsively as he caught | and kissed the hand that caressed her hair. J He smiled back to her, but it was i the poor ghost ot a smile tnat was I sadder than weeping. |

CHAPTER XXVII. OLD CARROL'S BRIDAL GIFT. In the iarge and brilliant company

BY ROSS ASELEIGH. Author of "Eleanor's Luck," "The Widow's Wager. "Pure Gold," Etc, etc.

of voyagers that filled the saloons of the splendid ocean steamer on which they sailed, Mr and Mrs Derring found themselves obliged to keep up appearances by affecting a mutual devotion to each other's society, [ which one of them at least was far from feeling. Gertrude almost longed for the mal de mer which would give her an excuse to keep I within her stateroom, and avoid the constant scrutiny of the many strange looks around her, and, above all, the following glance of her husband furj tive eyes. But from first to last she I felt none of the deathly qualms that laid many of her fellow passengers prone and helpless in their berths. Derring, too, was a good sailor, having crossed several times without even a dizziness to spoil his voyage. It soon became known that Mrs Derring was one with the heiress, Gertrude Carrel, and in a very few days she had collected an admiring court about her. The anxiety she felt to escape from tete-a-tete conversations with her hubsand caused her to make unusual efforts to be charming to others, and he encouraged her in keeping a crowd around her. It gratified his sslf-love to see his wife admired, and, being a patient man, he felt he could bide his time for the inevitable seasons of conjugal retirement, of which the future would be perhaps too lavish. He never intruded his attentions on her when he saw her surrounded; yet his decorous solicitude was commented on very flatteringly by the observers of Mr Derring's 'respectful devotion to his wife.' Moreover, diversions congenial to his own tastes were not lacking during the fair and rapid voyage. There were girls to flirt with under the awniDgs at noon day, or by moonlight on the upper deck, and card parties till late watches of the night. Amid all these exciting interests Mr Derring quite forgot the bridal present from his father-in-law until his arrival in London reminded him that money, and a great deal of it, would be necessary to satisty the extravagant ideas that his wife seemed bent on indulging in without stint. Thinking it would be as well to back up his own credit by that of his wife's father, he took out the sealed letter to examine into the extent of the old man's generosity. He saw it at the time standing on the hearthrug of their elegant draw-in-groom in a London hotel, while Mrs Derring drew on her pale opera gloves preparatory to an evening at Covent Garden. •Great God!' he exclaimed so suddenly and savagely that Gertrude fancied he must have hurt himself in some painful way. - She turned to him with an ejaculated inquiry. His dark face was fairly convulsed with indignant wrath, as he flung an open letter on the table before her. 'Read that cursed scrawl, and you'll understand what is the" matter!' I He hissed the words out as if I speech gave him some relief from the impotent rage that tore at his heart. ! Gertrude read the letter, which was evidently the carefully digested, but highly ignorant of her admirable parent. Substantially, it conveyed to the astonished minds of Mr and Mrs Derring, the startling information that old Carrol'B mushroom fortune had for months been tottering to its fall, and only held up by cunning subterfuge against the patient siege of creditors that would, in the end, swallow up every dollar made by his vast speculations in railroad stocks. In conclusion, he coolly stated that, having seen his daughter, so comfortably provided for, he saw no reason for prolonging the struggle, and would immediately surrender at the discretion of his creditors. He wished the newly-married couple joy of their unioD, and congratulated Derring on his independent, if moderate income which would, with close economy, keep them iu decent comfort abroad, where living was cheaper than in New York, and the necessity to keep up appearances far less exacting. He took for granted the fact that, considering the little cloud over their matrimonial horizon, they would not venture to return to America, and advised them paternally to live as much in retirement as possible, and to cultivate the sweet domestic felicities for which, he made no doubt, they both spossessed undeveloped capabilities. In a word, the wholt letter was a fine stioke of satire clothed in boorish phrase, and altogether characteristic of the old villain's shrewd, conscienceless, nature. - TO ps CONTINUED