A SECRET FOE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10153, 25 November 1910, Page 2

A SECRET FOE.

(OUR SERIAL.**

ry CERTRUDE WARDEN.

Author of "Scoundrel or Saint?" "The Secret of a Lett or,'/ "A Bold Deception," "The Wooing of a Fairy," "The Crime of Monte Carlo," etc.

CHAPTER VCcnihiviecl. At the sains time Iris could not possibly borrow money from Lord Mallyon, and then refuse the means by which she must eventually repay him. Within eighteen hours the Kaiser Wilhelm was due at Southampton, so that no time could be wasted over her decision. Alter sitting for fully ten minutes deep in thought, Iris turned to Lord Mallyon and held out her hand. "You are very, very kind," she said in a low voice, full of feeling, "and I will do just what you tell me. If you really think I am suitable as a governess for Madame M'avrogodato's children, and she, thinks so, too, I will take the situation, and I am deeply grateful to you." Tears shone in her eyes again. She would have been surprised, indeed, could she have known what it was that finally determined Lord Mallyon upon the plan he liad just laid before her. When he sought her that afternoon, it was, indeed, with the idea of helping her, but it was not until he witnessed the little scene between her and Fitzalan that he became altogether resolved never to lose sight of her. Intensely suspicious by nature, and inclined to attribute low motives to his fellow creature's actions, ho was the more impressed when he found ihat he had underestimated the merits of of his acquaintances, f-~ Iris' hearty indignation of Fitzalan's love-mak-ing attempts delighted the older man. That night, therefore ,Iris went to sleep with the comforting reflection that, thanks to Lord Mallyon, the future was comparatively clear before her; but a bitter ' disappointment awaited her the next day, when for the first time since the night of the -shipwreck, she came face to face with Drogo Gordon, as he stood' on deck, very, pale, with a red scar across., hjs forehead, watching the coast of England. Timidly approaching him Iris tried to put. into words her heartfelt gratitude ; but, with a bow of intense coldness Drogo Gordon cut her short. "I only did my duty, Miss Travel's," lie said and turned abruptly awav.

CHAPTER VI.

hoi* hard fate in a high-pitched voice and strong foreign accent. "It is tiresome, so very tiresome, that' Jasper and Helen should be so naughty," she was saying. "It's not from me, for certain, that they have inherited. But, Watkins, you know they must not ho with a lady they don't like. If this Miss Travers, of whom Lord Mallvon speaks so highly, was to go down to Eastborne to the children,' and they were to. dislike her, what would they do? You know well, Watkins, they take* their likes, their dislikes. Lastly, they would stick pins into her, and put squihs in her boots, and live crabs in her best bonnet, as they did to that excellent Miss Harker, who gave me notice a few weeks ago. My children are not like other children, Watkins." j "No, ma'am, indeed they are not," 1 Watkins answered readily. It came into the nurse's mind that, her mistress' progeny differed from other women's chiefly by reason of their extra naughtiness and the foolish spoiling which they had received ; but she had known this lady for two and twenty years, and so held her peace. 'All I hope is that Miss Dagmar will like her if the children do." Madame Mavrogodato continued: "You remember I had to send away that very nice person, Miss Wray, because Miss Dagmar disliked he-!, voice and the way ciie dressed.' "But Miss Dagmar is so seldom :u----home now, ma'am, that I shouldn't think she would be so particular," returned the nurse, who was longing for someone to take the constant charge of a pair of unmanagable children off her hands. At that moment the man servant who opened the door to Miss Travers came to his mistress from the house, bearing a card on a salver. "A lady to see you ma'am. She gave me this card.' ' ; "Miss Iris Travers',' Mrs Mavrogodato read from the card. "What sort of a looking person is she, Jackson ?" "Quite a young lady, ma'am. She doesn't look more than seventeen or so, ma'am." "Surely, Lord Mallyon would never have recommended any one so young as that for the care of the children!" exclaimed the mistress, startled out of her languor. "You must be mistaken, Jackson." "I daresay, Tsa'ain, I am," the man returned politely, and stood awaiting orders. 'Bring her out here," said Madame Mavrogodato; and Jackson, whose opinion of - the young lady had gono down several degrees cn hearing that she was, its he would have expressed it, "only the governess person," returned to the drawing room and condescendingly informed Miss Travers that she could follow him into the garden. "If I'd known it was a governess, I'd have shown her into tho library," he said to himself, with tl:-j instinctive antagonism of persons engaged in education. "Hang me, if she doesn't look like a swell!" He was right. Iris, in a dainty costume of dove-gray cashmere and chiffon, enlivened here and there by a touch of steel—a Paris model gown, if the truth was known, which she had bought at the West End store on the previous day; and a large gray straw hat, with large gray-and-whiti wings, looked to the full as aristocratic and refined in her pale, fair beauty as any visitor who had honoured the Greek merchant's house by her presence. Even lazy and unobservant Madame Mavrogodato was impressed by the girl's appearance. A greater contrast than that which existed between this dainty, little lady, and "that excellent Miss Harker," the children's late governess, it was imposible to imagine. Iris' manner of greeting the older lady had none of the deferential, #semi-apologetic air which iu Carlotta Mavrogodato's experience characterized the governess on approval. The girl was quietly self-possessed, as though aware that she was addressing an equal. "Lord Mallyon," she said, bowing slightly, "was kind enough to tell me that you need a governess for your two little children, and he advised me to call and ask you whether you thought I should be suitable for the position." "My brother-in-law has written to me about you," murmured Carlotta ; "but you must pardon me, Miss Travers, J did not expect to see anyone so young. You look as if you had not long left the scholoroom." "I am in my twentieth year," said. Iris, blushing faintly. (To be Continued.)

BAGMAR

Within two days of landing in England, Iris Travel's stood outside the heavily built Bays-water mansion, tenanted by the Greek merchant, Mr Mavrogodato, and his wife, Carlotta, who by her first marriage had been sister-in-law to Lord Mallyon. Number eighteen Lancashire Place had the blinds drawn in all the front windows, to intimate that its inhabitants" were out of town in September, like their neighbours; but in the spacious, beautifully kept garden at the back, common to the residents in the entire block of houses, a handsome, dark-haired woman, 110 longer in lier first youth, reclined in a basket chair in the shadow of si cluster of young trees, fanning herself under a lace sunshade, and complaining of her hard fate in having to be in town in such sultry weather. Her hearer, was a nurse, a stout, placid, and discreet person of fifty, who had remained with Dagmar's mother since the birth of her first child, and was invaluable at needlework, hair-dressing, and many different avocations, Madame Mavrogodato was a woman given to extensive confidences with servants, and sho always said that Watkins understood her. The pobr lady was indeed not difficult to understand. Beautiful, lazy, vain, talkative, weak-minded, extravagant and habitually untruthful, Carlotta Muvrogodato was like a tiresome child who had never grown up, possessing all of the child's defects and none of its . ingenuousness. , Married at the age of seventen to a man much older than herself, after a, childhood in Rome and a girlhood in Paris, she had become a mother at eighteen, before she had cut off the frivolities of schoolgirl life, and now at forty she was as incapable of managing a household or of imposing obedience upon her children as she had been tliree-and-twenty years before. Her figure inclined a little to stoutness, but her height, and the languid grace of her movements, helped her to retain an appearance of elegance, and her features were so regulafly beautiful that even the liberal "make up" she indulged in failed to spoil the. effect she produced. Against her pale, powdered skin the vermillion paint on hor small mouth and the black shadows rubbed into her eyelids stood out in striking contrast. Yet, although paint notably increases a woman's apparent age, Madame Mavrogodato did not look more than five and thirty at this moment, as sho leaned back in her delicate draperies of black lace and rose-coloured ribbon, lazily fanning herself and bewailing