"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10075, 24 August 1910, Page 2

"Th e Chains of Bondage."

CHAPTER XXlX.—Continued. "So I remember." Mrs Hood's voice head become rather tired; in her delicate state of health she found the effort of sustaining even a brief conversation with a stranger trying. "I was interested in the case because Mr Craven made his money in Australia, which is the country I came from." "Ineed?" said Sibil, politely, not in the least interested, and her face scarcely hiding the fact. "His photograph is given here in the paper. I suppose the editor put it in since no portraits of Miss Fairfax herself were available." And Sibil handed the open paper to Mrs Hood, indicating the likeness of the great Australian money king. With an effort the elder woman got up from her reclining position in the invalids chair to look at it. Sibil Ellstree was startled at the swift change that came over the other's face as her eye rested on the portrait of the dead man, she was infinitely more startled still as a'cry that broke from her lips. "That George Craven, the millionaire?" Mrs Hood cried, her pale face suddenly lighting up with a gleam of intense excitement, and her voice full of uncontrollable emotion. "But that—that is my husband's portrait! The portrait of Elsie's father!"

CHAPTER XXX

"JEALOUSY, CRUEL AS THE GRAVE. Sheer, utter amazement aroused Sibil Ellstree from her careless indifference. For a moment she stared at the other woman speechlessly, then she exclaimed: "George Craven your husband? Oh, you are mistaken, surelymistaken! How could that possibly be." "I am, not mistaken," came back the determined answer. The tired note in the older woman's voice had gone in the excitement that had swept over her. "If that man whose portrait is given here was really George Craven, then George Craven and my husband were one and the

same man! See, it is stated that this is from a portrait taken twenty years ago—it was a copy of that same actual photograph that k. gave me after our marriage—he. my husband! The same photograph! How could I be mistaken ? You ski!! see it yourself." Mrs Hood had risen to her feet J Sibil was startled by the look on her face. Two hectic red spons burned in the whiteness of her cheeks • an intense, overwhelming excitement possessed her, the excitement tlratshe had been warned against. "The husband who deserted me in a town in Western Australia soon after my daughter was born—though he did not call himself George Craven then, and though for more than eighteen years I have lost sight of him, I know now that my husband was George Craven, the millionaire." she cried. "I have our marriage certificate, also the certificate of Elsie's birth; and this fortune he left, all his millions—they do not belong to his neice, Judith Fairfax; they belong to me and to my daughter, the wife and child whom ' this man so deeply wronged. Hers and mine—and I shall claim those millions for my daughter!"

"But this is madness!" cried Sibil, as excited now as the older woman. The very atmosphere of the room seemed to be charged with eleotricity. "George Craven was never married," she continued. "Who will believe this wild story of yours? Tins story that is some mad delusion on your part!" She would not believe it—she refused to believe It, though it was clear to her that Mrs Hood herself ivas convinced of tlie truth of her assertion. , i If this wild impossible tale was true, it would mean that the woman to whom her brother was engaged to be married—the brilliant match Wilfred was making with one of the richest women in England—would be stripped of every penny. Further, it would mean this: that the girl she hated so intensely, her rival who had come between her and Jim Ralston, would inherit all this money. What a triumph that would be for her rival! Then all her scheme for parting the lovers would fall to the ground. But, of course, the story was impossible- Sibil could not believe ib possible. "I am under no delusion, as I shall convince you," cried Mrs Hood, her eyes feverishly alight in this stupendous revelation that had broken upon her, this amazing fact that

BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTOtf. 3 W , AutLor of—"His College Chaai," " Worthinsiton's %» * Pledge," "A Kej-tniant Fou," «io. 3 I ' j

J would lift her daughter out of the ; ruck of poverty. "I have qroof—proof!" Mrs Hood crossed unsteadily toward an old bureau standing in one corner of the room; and oven Sibil, despite the tumult of her conflicting feelings, was startled to see how weak and ill she looked. Once she paused, and her hand went spasmodically to her heart, with a little gasping of breath; and for a moment Sibil, thought she would have fallen. But her intense eagerness to convince Sibil that there was no mistake in this statement she had confidently voiced, sustained her, and fought back the rush of weakness. Her husband had been George Craven the millionaire! Since he had died without a will, . she and her daughter were the sole heirs of all he had left behind him! * For herself this woman did not care; had there been only herself to think of, she would not have taken | the money after the wrong the dead man had done her. Her husband's desertion of her and her child, after a brief space of married life, had been a tragic grief that had left its traces on her. But for Elsie's sake the old wounds must be bared—tihat old, painful story she had never told even to Elsie—to obtain the fortune that was rightly hers, the fortune that would set Elsie free from the necessity of this daily drudging that would change her entire life. "You must be mad!" whispered Sibil Ellstree again, drawing in her breath sharply. "You are deceived by a chance likeness, or trying to impose on the credulity of others. The thing is impossible. Who will believe such an unlikely story?" "They shall believe it—all the worid shall believe it!" cried Mrs Hood fiercely. "As George Craven's widow, I shall claim his fortune for myself and my daughter, and the law shall give it to mo! I am soitry for Miss Fairfax, who cannot know she is enjoying a fortune to which she has no right; but I must think [of my daughter first—my daughter, f who has known poverty all her life, has had to earn her living by daily drudgery, when all the time her fath--1 er was a millionaire." As though her intense overmaster-

Jing excitement alone keqt her from collapse, Mrs Hood reached the bureau—put out a hand to support herself. She was trembling from sheer weakness. Sibil watched her across the room as if fascinated. What proofs were there that this woman spoke of? In some inexplicable' way the conviction was creeping over her that this statement so passionately asserted might be true; that Judith Fairfax would be Stripped of her wealth at a blow, to make enormously rich this girl whom she hated. She stood with riveted' eyes watching the other woman's movements—waiting for the proof. There seemed to be a secret drawer in the bureau, as is so often the case in the construction of old cabinets. Excitedly, Mrs Hood pulled out a shallow drawer; putting her , hand into the recess, she seemed to touch a .hidden spring, and the false back fell out, revealing a secret pigeon hole. Prom this recess Mrs Hood hurriedly drew out a photograph, and a bundle of letters and papers fastened together by a band. "There! See for yourself!" she cried. And with a swift gesture that was almost dramatic, she held out in her excitedly trembling hand a photograph that Sibil Ellstree's eyes fell on with a start; beyond all question it was a duplicate of the photograph reproduced in the paper on the table above the name of George Craven. And on the back of it her eyes' caught the inscription written in faded ink: "To Mary, from her loving husband, George Hood." And the date followed of nearly twenty years before. 'To be Continued).