NEIL MALLOW'S SIN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10137, 7 November 1910, Page 2

NEIL MALLOW'S SIN.

(OUR SERIALS

BY JOHN A. PETERS. Author of "Married at Midnight," "Two Odd Girls," etc., etc., etc

CHAPTER I.—Continued. He was an excellent conversationalist, infusing occasionally a subtle, poignancy into his gravely uttered witticism's on the various personages in the allium, when she came suddenly upon a face that startled her; it was so like the one belonging to the man of her dreams. A magnetic, swarthy face, whose passionate eyes haunted her hours after she had closed the album; whoso mouth, half hidden by a half-drooping black moustache, she thought perfect in the clear chiselled beauty. Afraid almost to look at it, her eyes seemed unable to turn from the eyes that bore for her an entrancing smile. Observing the interest she could not disguise, Randal Drake was about to turn over the leaf, but she checked him. "One moment, please. What a grand expressive face he has! He looks—" "Well?" as she hesitated; "proceed. How does he look?" "•As if he had a noble nature, and were endowed with the fire of genius. As if, were it possible for him to fall into temptation —to commit a deed of wrong—his conscience would sting and upbraid him forever. Who is the original of this photograph ?" "I cannot tell you; some actor, probably." A deliberate falsehood, and one which he felt ashamed to tell, for Randal was a habitually truthful man; but instigated by an incipient feeling of jealousy, he wanted to suppress the name and quench the interest exhibited by this girl in the pictured face of the man ho know as Noil Mallow. Christine detected the jealousy in his voice, the cloud on his brow, and being in a penitential mood, she said no more. But she cared to look at no more faces. The rest, she argued, would he commonplace in the extreme after scrutinizing so closely the lineaments of the particularly handsome man who attracted her so powerfully. Music, soft and luring, rose and fell about them. The girl was silent, wrapped in an Elysian dream, thinking of the dark, pictured face, with its impassioned eyes and perfect mouth. Would she ever meet him, ever drink in the music of his voice, ever feel the warm clasp of his hand? CHAPTER 11. AX UNGRATEFUL FRIEND.

The man watched her moodily. This brilliant creature was presenting a new phase in her character tonight. What meant this dreamy, abstracted air on her part? Was she infatuated with Neil Mallow's face? "If so, Heaven grant that she may never come into contact with him," he prayed, "for he has a way with him that is irresistible."

"Christine!" he called; but there was silence on her part; she was dreaming of the dark, mysteriously beautiful face. Still the wild, sweet German music discoursed by the musicians in a distant room surged about them. Prosaic, matter-of-fact man, though Randal Drake was, he could not bear to hear it. It sounded to him as if human beings were sobbing their lives away. He touched the silent woman on tlu> shoulder almost roughly. He had addressed her more rudely than he had ever done in his life. Christine started up, a laugh, mellifluous as a rippling brooklet, escaping her lips. "I—l actually believe I was dreaming, wide awake as I have been. That sweet, sweet, music! as luring as the sirens' voices when they fell upon the ear of startled Ulysses. It steals away my senses. Come, monsieur, give me your arm, and conduct me to the ballroom. We'll grow sentimental if we linger here longer." Shortly after they were whirling dizzily round to the measures of an intoxicating waltz, but all the while she was haunted by the eyes of the man she had never met. She was quieter than usual that night; bon mots fell less frequently from her lips; and her admirers noticed that in her eyes there was a dreamy light they had never seen before. "Confound that Neil Mallow's picture!" grumbled Drake; "I wish he had gone to perdition ere lie ever sat for it! I hope those two will never meet." But tho Weird Sisters decreed otherwise. It was quite late when Christine found herself, for once, alone—alone in the green, fragrant conservatory. She passed slowly down the narrow aisle, on either side of which were Cloisonne vases, out of which reared gigantic caoutchouc plants and palms, whoso green fingers seemed to extend upwards to the roof. 'Twas a delightful May evening. The windows were opened, and she crouched down by one, a cool breeze stealing in and cooling her heated brow. Compared to the mephitic atmosphere of the ballroom, tho night air seemed innocuous, and she inhal-

Ed it with pleasure, hoping . no one would find her there.

Presently, however, two figures glided up to the very window at which she was crouched, and halted at the front of the tree whose brandies extended across and shadowed it completely. Voices were heard hut Christine felt too indolent to move, and did not; and when she had heard a few words of the conversation she would not have moved if her life had been in jeapardy. The first voice she recognized as her lover's; the second was an mifamilar one to her. It was full of pathos. A vein of agony pervaded and ran through it. Peering through the interstices of the spreading branches Christine saw the stranger at the foot of the tree. He had the face of the man in the picture. Greedily she drank in his words. He was pleading to her lover in tones of frenzied anguish. All, she could not hear, but she learned enough to realize that he was in the direst peril—that unless he raised one thousand dollars within the next twenty four hours, nothing could save him from imprisonment. But he pleaded to a man who resisted his prayers —whose heart seemed as hard as stone. "I cannot help you," he said coldly, unaware of the proximity of the girl, whose singular interest in the man's pictured face was the sole reason that prompted him to refuse the prayer of one ~e had always, until to-night called friend. "I have no money to spare." "Oh, don't tell mo that, Randa! Listen, and lend it to me for pity's sake! It will save me that ignominious imprisonment, far more cruel that death, itself. It will keep me from committing suicide, for I swear I will never live to have the four walls of a prison close around me. I beg you not to be so unfeeling, Randal! What has come over you? Wo have been friends—such warm, true friends—like brothers. I have been unfortunate, but that ought to excite your sympathy, not your indignation. I no longer move in the same circle with you, but for the sake of the dear old days, when we were inseparable, do not turn to me a deaf ear." But his companion held up his hand to stay the fast-dropping words. "Spare me a recital of those days Neil Mallow. They are dead and gone; why resuscitate them ? Lot them rest in their grave. I tell you I have not a cent to lend or to give you. You plead to a man as hard as adamant—to a man who has no more feeling for you than a stone. Nay, I lie! I hate you as deeply as I once cared for you!" As if it were an effort, the man lifted his head, and the girl in the background was struck with the agony stamped on his face. Bloodless, spectral, it looked in. the eerie moonlight, xov a moment he was stunned, literaly unable to comprehend the'meaning of his quondam friend speaking like that. Then he said in so sad a tone that the girl's heart bled for him: "I am sorry, Randal Drake, to hoar you give vent to such expressions ' I have done nothing to incur your enmity. God help me, if you 'resist rov entreaties, for I have no one to turn to-no one to whom 1 can o-o. What has embittered you so ."gainst me? Why has your friendship turned to hatred?" "I cannot tell you. Suffice it to say that it is so. Why were you so foolish to fling away the fortune left you bv Simon Graves ?" "Have vou not heard? It was left unconditionally to me; but could I luxuriate in the riches that rightfully belonged to the son, who,inarrying'against his father's wishes, was discarded, cast off as if he were a dog ? Indeed, no! Not a penny of it would I accept. A rumour was afloat that George was dead; hence Simon Graves, in making mo his heir, enjoined no promise to withhold all property from his son, as he assuredly would have tried to do had he not given credence to the gossip. The son is consumptive, and Ts sojourning in Italy with his family. In such a terrible tsrait as I am in now, there is not sufficient time to apply to him and have my wants relieved. I have no business tact. Well-educated, I fail signally in everything I undertake. I have a debt of honour to liquidate. Oh, Randal, I am hut three and twenty, with a long life of usefulness ahead of me if I can but weather the storm this time. Won't you tender mo your assistance?" A fortune is in your hands to dispose of it as you like. I only ask you to loan me the money. Lay aside your hostility for the moment. Bo merciful." "I cannot. The animosity I bear you, suddenly as it has sprung into life, is ineradicable. Have you. finished?" Neil Mallow straightened himself up. Ho was tall and muscular, ancl broad of shoulder-—a splendidly formed man. He spoke, and there" was no faltering in his voice—no irresolution. (To he Continued.)