FIGHTING HER WAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 987, 5 March 1910, Page 2

FIGHTING HER WAY.

CHAPTER XXXII.-Continued, i By noon she «>as diligently engaged | in fashioning a most bcautilul scretn I if pale lavender satin on one side and j rich gold colour on the other, on | which she designed to paint her favourite flowers from the colours that stood ready for use upon the table before her. The sunlight of a bilmy day fell through the lace curtains at the window and brought out all the soft golden lights in her luxuriant hair and drooping lashes. The warmth of the room had flushed her cheeks to the tint of a blush rose, and the grace and freshness 01 her girlish beauty was enhanced by her half negligee toilet of some shimmering azure stuff, falling around her in close, thick folds, but leaving exposed the small, shapely feet that rested on a cushion, side by side, like twin blossoms in their blue velvet sandals. Christine, busy with her work and with her thoughts, made no account of the footseps passing and repassing in the corridor beyond her door. No one ever came to her room save Mrs Gocdley or the servant who attended to her wants, and she was never interrupted by visitors. Therefore, when she heard a rap on her door, she said, without hesitation, '(Jome in,' supposing it, of course, to be Mrs Goodley or the housemaid. She did not even lift her face from her work, but remained with her back to the door, until she felt a tremulous hand laid tightly on her j bowed head. Looking up, she saw i Roland Marlow, with an expression of ecstatic joy on his pale face. J In her gladness she forgot she had i forbidden him to come again. She | said nothing, but her eyes spoke for her heart and, smiling down into their heaven-blue depths so clear and pure, Roland said softly: 'You must not scold me for coming, my dear. I bring you 'tidings of great joy,' and 1 could not bear I that any other lips than my own should tell it to you. Christine, my little love, you are this moment the heiress of over a million of money, and one of the oldest and most respected names in America.' The words seemed to have no significance for her, or the stunned her too much to give expression to the sensation they produced. She did not move, or try to speak, but sat gazing up into ttoland's eyes in a bewildered way. He took her face in his hands and pressed it gently sa he said: * You cannot believe it? Well, no wcnder; but your incredulity |does nut alter the truth.' Then, drawing a chair to her side, he sat down and taking a letter from his pocket said: 'Give me your hand and be perfectly still while I read this to you; then perhaps you will comprehend not only the magnitude of your present good fortune, but the mystery of your past life.' Very deliberately Roland read aloud the following letter, from a lawyer in Ch'cago to Mr Trueheart. a well-known equity lawyer of New York: 'Chicago, March 10th, 18—. 'Alexander C. Trueheart, Esq. 'Dear Sir—As the legal adviser, and now the executor to the estate of the late Henry B. North, of this city, but formerly of Plymouth, Mass., I herewith solicit your professional services to assist me in the discovery of tne rightful heir to the said estate of Henry B. Norht, which is left by his last will to his only child, Mary Christine North, afterward Castlebar, if she be still living; otherwise, to her child or children, if there be any such surviving; otherwise, to found an asylum for the relief of destitute mothers and young children. 'The circumstances as related to me by the deceased, and by me rendered in writing at his deathbed, are as follows: — 'At the age of thirty-three Henry B. North, the eldest son of his father, who was the sole representative of the American branch of the ancient English family of the Norths, of Worcestershire, removed, after his father's death, from Plymouth—where the family had permanently resided from the time of their emigration—to Chicago, where he invested his patrimony in a successful railroad corporation, that subsequently paid very large dividends to the shareholders. 'Henry B. North had one child—a daughter—left an infant on his hand at the death of her mother. He never married again, and, the care of his child being confided to a member of his wife's family, he did not have .the opportunity ot cultivating that paternal tenderness that should have been lavished on his only child; on the contrary, the cares of business were permitted to crowd out his paternal solicitude, fo that when the girl returned to his home a grown-up young lady, she found in her surviving parent a cold, preoccupied man, whose chief delight consisted in the accumulation of a vast fortune. Naturally the girl, whu was warm-hearted and enthusiastic felt the chHl of such com-

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

panionship- the more as her father took no pains to furnish her with society suited to her age and taste. 'Miss North requested of her parent permission to occupy her time in perfecting her talent for music and painting, and was allowed to visit a conservatory to receive instructions in music and the Acaden y of Design for lesson in painting. At the latter place she contracted a passion for a young artist named Castlebar, and on being told by her father who discovered the affair, that she must at once and forever sever her acquaintance with the young man, she eloped with him to New York, and from thence wrote a letter asking her father's recognition of her marriage. 'lnstead of his blessing and pardon, Mr North replied with maledictions on them both, and forbade her ever to approach him in any way again, but to consider herself an outcast from the name and the fortune she had disgraced. Events praved that the young lady inherited her father's implacability of disposition, for she never afterward held any communication with him. 'At the time of her writing, young Castlebar and herself were residing with one Edward Chilton, a scene painter of note, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Clinton street. Of their subsequent residence or career Mr North had, at the time of his death, no knowledge; but in his last painful illness he was seized with poignant remorse for his conduct to his daughter, and, before his faculties failed, executed a will conveying ths whole of property as above stated. 'My business will not permit me to make in person the investigations requisite to trace the banished child, but I feel confident they will be as thoroughly conducted by you or any one you may see fit to intrust with so important a commission. 'I have the pleasure to subscribe myself. 'Your obt. servt, 'GEO. L. CRAIGHILL.' By the time Roland concluded the reading of this epistle, Christine had by an involuntary process gathered up in her mind a thousand intangible circumstances and incidents of her past lite that, in the light of this revelation, stood out before her defined and complete evidences of her mother's identity with the lost Mary Christine North. But when Roland ceased speaking and turned his interrogating glance upon her she said: 'Why have you so hastily decided that my mother is the child of Henry B. North -my father one with the Castlebar that she married?' 'Remembering your sad story of your mother's life as you revealed it, the initial letters on the mysterious box you resolved never to disturb, and urged by the potent intuitions of my heart, I felt a conviction that will soon be justified by such proofs as you have in your possession. As the agsnt of the law, I now demand from you the box of private effects bearing your mother's initials, 'M. C. N.' Christine smiled at his earnestness, for indeed she had now no wish nor intention to refuse him the chance of freeing her dear mother's memory, and her own life from the shadow that had lain on both so long. _

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FINAL ACT IN THE DRAMA. There were tears of mingled joy and sadness in Christine's sweet eyes when she brought and laid before Roland the old leathern case sealed over the lock by her dead mother's hand. One thought, one hope, eclipsed all the other rays that the 'sun of prosperity' shed on her pathway in this hour. Her mother's fame was to be now and forever redeemed from the doubt that had so long enshrouded it, and her own birthright of honour was to stand revealed before the eyes of the man she lcved. No wonder she stood by with tremulous emotion as he opened the faded casket and inspected its longhidden contents. Two packages of letters worn by frequent perusal, a lock of golden hair folded in perfumed silk, a medallion with.the beautiful young face of a man painted on ivory- these were the lorg-locked treasures that Christine had guarded with such solemn care. They told the whole story in the burning phrase of youth's flamelike p^sion—first how th< v loved, and last how they suffered; and, ah me! how one of them repented! Whioh of them? Dost thou asK, dear reader? Not the woman, and wife and mother, rfhe loved on, and was faithful to the memory of her heart's wild dream till death stilled the constant pulses, and sent her to seek in the world of 'embodied spirits' the one whose patience had failed him all too soon, and who had left the mother and babe to meet the future as best thev might after he had pined and fretted himself in to his grave. TO P« CONTINUED