FIGHTING HER WAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 989, 8 March 1910, Page 2

FIGHTING HER WAY.

CHAPTER XXlll.—Continued.

A well-dressed manservant answers the summons, and is about to drive the woman away as a nuisance ur a beggar well-fed menials have little pity for starving vagrants—but the woman stops him by saying : 'I wish to see Mr Marbw, the master of this house, on important business.' 'I will let Mr Marlow know, ma'am,' replied the servant, closing the door in her face with the coolest insolence. 'Ah, my God, to think I've come to this!' broke in a dry, sobbing way from the woman's lips. 'A strange-looking woman at the door wishes to see you, sir, she says, on important business, but it's my opinion she's a tramp.' 'Go and bring her in out of the[cold, Hopkins, and say I'll be with her presently. Take her into the library.' Roland Mark>w sat at table in his own beautiful home, with his beautiful wife facing him across tha round table on which the dessert and wines had just been placed. 'Don't keep her waiting, Roland. I will excuse you, and you can take jour wine with me after you have given the poor creature the alms I presume she has come ta beg for,' said Christine sweetly in reply to her husband's gknce of inquiry after dismissing the servant. 'So I will, my pet; I'll only be a moment.' Scarcely had he spoken when they heard the fall of a body on the floor of the library that adjoined the dining room. Christine followed her husband, and they found a woman stretched oi. the carpet, her arms flung upward, and her face jying on them. Hopkins, in mute amazement, stood gazing on the prostrate figure he had just ushered into the room. Roland raised the poor creature, who had fainted quite away, and as he turned her face up to the light, both Christine and a cry of astonishment. It was the face lof Gertrude Carrol, but, Oh how altered and disfigured. They had last beheld her in the regal robes of a bride, with, as they supposed, a million for her dowry. They saw her now in the rags of a mendicant, with all the degradation of want and suffering visible in her dress and countenance. 'Some brandy, Hopkins—quick! called Roland to the servant, and forcing a spoonful' of the liquor into her mouth, he held Gertrude's head while Christine bathed her face with icey cold water. 'Ah! another—another of those frightful fits!' gasped the wretched woman as she came back to herself, and her eyes rolled wildly from side to side, regaining the integrity of their vision. At length she recognised the two who stood over her. A terrible moan burst from her purple lips,, and her features writhed in the agony of some unbearable pain as she cried: 'Oh, that it should come to this! I—l an outcast beggar, whining for bread at your feet—yours!' 'Hush you have no strength towaste in such words, or such thoughts. We will care for you, and do what we can to help you,' said Roland, gently, as he arranged the pillows of the couch more comfortably, and covered her cold limbs with a rich carriage rug of furs that had been thrown on a chair. As for Christine, big tears were raining from her lovely eyes as she gazed speechless and appalled on the wreck; of the haughty woman who had sought to do her the deadliesc wrong. Roland whispered something to her, and she left the room, but returned directly with a cup of hot broth, and announced that she had sent for the doctor, and that a room was prepared to receive the sufferer. ...--MV'hat a noble woman you are, ; Christine,' said Roland, with tender devotion as he stood beside his ! wife awaiting the arrival of the doctor, whose skill was surely j needed by the woman who lay up- | stairs in the care of Christine's maid. ! Gertrude had seemed to find Mrs Marlow's presence'so painful, that in mercy to her Christine had left the room. 'What less could we do than shelter and succor the poor lost thing, my Roland?' 'But there are many a ays of doing a thing, dear. Who but my blessed wife would thus unfold the white wings of her charity to the woman who had sought her ruin' 'Your wif>', my ioyal-souled husband, can and should have a higher ruie of conduct than less happy women. God has dealt with that miserable being upstairs. It is not for us to remember here sins against her; she will trouble no one much longer.' It was true. A few days ended the dark tragedy for Gertrude Carrol. Only in her mad ravings of delirum at the last could thev gather hints of her evil story. Imprecations upon the heada of Derriner, Auguste Schley, and her father, betrayed the parts these three had played in her later wous; but how, where, when were questions never to be answered , in this world.

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

When she was dead they buried her decently, and Roland and Christine stood by to see a modest gravestone erected to mark the spot where they laid her. Before the spring had fairly set in, after his wife's removal to the South Doctor Howard was summoned to see her die. Fred Alcot accompanied his former guardian in his mournful journey, but all was over before they reached Aiken, and the body had been, at the dying request of the deceased, interred in the rural churchyard beyond the town. In her last moments Mrs Howard had joined the hands of Robert Smythe and her daughter, who had fallen desperately in love with each other at first sight, and this had determined the poor mother to have her bones rest where the eyes she loved best in the world could see her grave. Great as his chagrin and disappointment were, Doctor Howard was too wise to make a fuss about the engagement of his daughter to a one-armed rebel, with nothing but his industry and talent to. take him through lite. The mischief was done, and he knew Jeanie too well to think he could undo it. Doctor Alcot made the bride a present of a hundred shares in the Graniteville factory, which, in the South, was considered a fortune. In due course of time Fred came to discover that sweet little Caro Montague, with her rich Southern beauty, and noble womanhood, could console him for the broken dreams of a former time. When both marriages had been brought to a happy conclusion, good old Mrs Smythe was more convinced than ever that the old issues of the civil war should be allowed to rest quietly in the graves that had closed over them, and the brave soldiers who fought them out with such solemn conviction that they gave up their lives in proof of their faith. In one of the daily papers, about a year subsequent to the death of Gertrude Carrol, tliis paragraph appeared: 'Tried and condemned to imprisonment for life on a double charge of bigamy and forgery, Hubert Derring, formerly a citizen of New York, but convicted of his felonies in the State of Ohio.' As for the miserable old bankrupt father of the unhappy Gertrude, nothing was ever known of him after the crash that blotted him out from the financial and social horizon on which he had risen like a splendid meteor, only to fall back into the abyssmal chaos of degradation and poverty. If this modest story shall serve to point a moral to our readers, and convince them that the rewards of high Henven to virtue, honour and courage are as sure as its punishment of vice, villainy and cowardice, the author will feel in all humility that she has riot sent it forth on a vain mission, and in this hope she bids her patient friends a kindly adieu! THE END.