A SECRET FOE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10149, 20 December 1910, Page 2

A SECRET FOE

(OUR SERIALS

i y uERTRUDE WARDEN. Author of "Scoundrel or Saint?" "The Secret of a Letter," -'A Bold rw.nrjtion," "The Wooing of a Fairy," "The Crime of Monte Carlo," etc.

CHAPTER XVl.—Continued. It was from Drogo that the suggestion came that their association should terminate on the very day of Lord Maliyon's return to town after his brief honeymoon. Lord Mallyon had not the slightest suspicion that his secretary had ever cherished any warmer feeling for Iris than a distant friendship, perhaps a little strengthened by the fact that he had been the means of saving her life. He had, therefore, particularly invited his secretary to be present with his father, Colonel Tom Gordon, as one of the few witnesses to his marriage. It had been a very private affair, owing to the recent dangerous accident to Lady Constance Cazalet, from whose house the wedding was to have taken place. Dagmar Mallyon and her mother, Lord Mallyon's_ only near relatives, had been unavoidably prevented from attending by the serious illnss of the former, an illness so serious that Iris had begged Lord Mallyon to defer the wedding. But the bridegroom had been obdurate. No one but he and his doctor knew how terribly the shock of the scene in the garden of Cazalet Lodge had affected him, adding five years to his apparent age, and shaking his nervous system, owing to the weak state of liis heart, so severely thatonly his iron will enabled him to continue to show an impassive front to the world. For the first time he felt his age; those two-and-sixty years which he had so far carried with the easy dignity and manly grace of forty-five, seemed suddenly to weigh upon his limbs and brain. But the chief result from this sudden collapse was the restless eagerness to hasten the marriage. In daily calm and cheerful intercourse with a girl so yonng, fresh, and ingenuous as Iris, he told himself that his lost youth would be renewed. Hers should be the gentle hand to smooth the wrinkles from his brow, and to bring smiles to his serious countenance. He was the more desirous of hastening the marriage because Iris, since the interview in the cloisters with Drogo Gordon, seemed ,j to catch at any chance for deferring it. Her heart was just beginning to awake to possibilities in life which a docile, grateful existence with a man more that forty years her senior could never supply. At first, Lord Mallyon had hardly taken seriously her new reluctance- to become his wife. He chose to attribute her faltering requests that he would postpone the marriage, and that he would even reconsider his determination to wed anyone so much beneath him in position, to maidenly shyness, or even to conventional affectation. It was such an undoubtedly good marriage for her, a pennilessgoverness, to wed the Attorney-Gen-eral of England, a man of rank and great wealth, thaj, it seemed impossible that she reatlly desired to evade the honour. But Lord Mallyon was too keen-sighted not to pereeive, during-the time -Iris was devoting herself to nursing Lady Constance, that the'girl's wish to put off the: marriage was undoubtedly strengthened daily. Manlike, he at once determined that no power on earth should snatch his prize from his grasp. Satiated with the artificial charms of women of his own set, and weary of the grasping vulgarity of women belonging to a lower grade of society, he turned with relief to the girl's- pure, pale, passionless fairness, and promised himself the congenial task of bringing light and colour into the nature of this lovely statue by force of his own magnetic power over her. Lord Mallyon had always been what is called successful among women. His singularly handsome appearance, his openly expressed admiration of their physical beauty, and Ms caustic wit veiled under his unfailing courtesy of manner, had by turns infatuated women of various ages and ranks in life. His first wife, a fashionable, fair coquette, had tried vainly to break-his heart; and, on discovering that it could be on occasion considerably harder than her own, had instantly fallen in love with him, and lavished upon him a devotion which he had accepted with politeness, and retained until her death. Even at Ills present age he was an exceedingly attractive man, and having for years considered the possibilities of a second union, always with a beautiful young girl, he did not display unreasonable vanity when he believed himself still capable of inspiring love. Iris Travers was so unlike all other women of his acquaintance that the difference perplexed him. Very soon he found that superb presents were wasted upon her, in that she did not attach the same value to dress and diamonds as did most women of her age. Her manner towards him was perfect; she evidently admired him greatly, and sincerely enjoyed his conversation. She even looked forward to his visits with some eagerness and in all that she said and did endeavoured to please, him. And yet she was unaccountably anxious not to marry him, even going the length of begging him to break off the match. But Lord Maliyon's will was many times too strong for her, and so it came about that the last days of October saw the group within a pretty church down an avenue of trees in St. John's Wood, Lord Mallyon a little paler than was his wont before the accident at Cazalet Lodge, but a handsome, erect and impressive figure, towering over the prematurely bent form of bis father-in-law, the

well-known Professor Travers, who with his buxom second wife, had come to England to be present at the ceremony, performed by a high ecclesiastic —a friend of the bridegroom—assisted by the grandfather of the bride. Drogo Gordon, sitting with his father in a pew close by the altarrails, steeling himself to witness the union of the woman he loved with another man. saw and remembered one thing only in the ceremony—the face of the bride. Dressed in dead-white silk, falling straight, untrimmed folds from her slim waiste, Iris looked, under her shadowy veil of white tulle, a creature almost too pale, slender, and ethereal for human beauty. The renowned modiste who had arranged her trousseau - realized that virgin simplicity of style best suited her clients dreamy loveliness. Only once did her expression change, and that was when, as she proceeded slowly up the aisle on her fathers arm, her eyes were drawn to meet those of Drogo Gordon; flashing into hers a long look in which pity, scorn and yearning were strangely intermixed. As though his gaze had pentrated into her soul, stirring new emotions within her, a wave of colour passed over her face. She stopped for a moment in her passage up the aisle, and into her blue eyes came the same expression of helpless terror, and of frantic appeal for help, which Drogo had seen there on the night she had clung to his arm on the sinking deck of the Alantis. His heart began to beat wildly within him, nd he half turned towards her as he stood. For a moment the place, the people were forgotten, and his one mad impulse was to spring forward, to catch the woman he loved in his arms, and bear her away from this mockery of a service, this hideous union of cynical December with mildeyed May. As if almost expecting such an action on his part, she had stood hesitating on her way to the altar, her eyes fixed upon him. Neither of them ever knew how long that instant lasted. To the onlookers it seemed an accidental stop of a few seconds; to those two it meant the change of a lifetime. Then the professor whispered in his daughter's ear, and, laying his hand upon hers, which rested on his arm, hurried her forward, towards the altar, where Lord Mallyon was waiting. Back simultaneously on the minds of both, came thos words of Browning which Drogo had quoted to Iris in the Flower Walk'. "There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honours perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle. While just this or that poor impulse, which - for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a lifetime, that away the rest have trifled. The chance had passed! It was all oyer unci done with now, that'foolish, half-begun romance of Drogo Gordon's life, and he though, as he waited for his employer's return on that dreary November afternoon, and he should by this have schooled himself to meet Lord Maliyon's wife with indifforence. He heard from the horary, that same room in which Lord Mallyon had first asked Iris to be his wife, in the presence of his neice and sister-in-law, the wheels of the carriage, bringing home the pair from their honeymoon, crunch into the gravel outside. He hoped, in spite of his assumed indifference, that they would not find their way to the library, but in this he was mistaken. After an interval of about quarter of an hour, during which Lord Mallyon was showing other parts of the house to Iris, the library door opened, and Drogo met his employer and bride face- to face. Paler than ever he found her, with a certain sadness in her hitherto- candid eyes, but more human, more appealing, by reason of that same sadness. In an instant, in spite of all his resolutions, his heart, seemed to bound to meet hers; he hardly heard or understood the voice of his employer, asking him how the daily work had fared during his absence. "Do you think that Lady Mallyon looks all the better for the change?" At this direct challenge Drogo was forced to look Iris in the face. Ho purposely stood with his back to the light, that she might detect no sign of the struggle to appear calm and .unmoved which was going on within him. "Lady Mallyon looks very well." Iris flushed under the chilling coldiiess of bis tones. In her style of dress, far richer than it had formerly been, she looked much older than those days on the Atlantis. Instead of the plain black serge, made by her hands, she wore a costly costume of blue-grey cloth, trimmed sparingly with silver braid, perfect in fit, cut and design. A deep cape of dark sable, and a wide hat of blue-grey felt adorned with black plumes and a silver buckle, dainty grey gloves, and ruffles of creamy old lace at tho neck "and sleeves, completed her costume. . Yet Drogo wished her voice were, i less sweet as she uttered, coldly enough, some simple words of wel- > come, everyone of which thrilled through him. (To be Continued.)