A SECRET FOE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10150, 21 December 1910, Page 2

A SECRET FOE

(OUR SERIAL.)

iy uERTRUDE WARDEN. Author of "Scoundrel or Saint?" "The Secret of a Letter," -'A Bold TW.fiDtion," "The Wooing of a Fairy," "The Crime ot Monte Carlo," etc.

CHAPTER XVT.—Continued. Drogo felt it a shameful confession of weakness on his part that he should be so moved by the mere sound of the voice of another man's wife; and when, shortly, after, Iris left the two men alone together, the idea came witli pressing force upon Drogo that it would be better if he fled the temptation of her presence. How could he bear to see her, and hear her almost daily, and yet preserve his pride, his self-control ? Despising himself, yet anxious to protect himself against' a weakness which angered him. he bluntly told Lord Mallyon that he proposed, if his employer would provide himself with another secretary, resigning his position and setting up on his own account as a writer. "As soon as you are suited, I should like to leave," lie said. ■ .... .j CHAPTER XVII. A SNAKE AT THE HEARTH. "By the way, my dear," Lord Mallyon observed to his young bride during the course of their tete-a-tete meal in the smaller dining room at Mallyon Court on the evening of their return from their honeymoon. "I had an interview with Drogo an hour or two ago which rather annoyed me. The young gentleman was bent on leaving me, I suppose, with the idea of improving himself in some other appointment." Over Lady Mallyon's pale cheek the slightest blush passed as she raised her eyes to her husband's. Lord Mallyon noticed it on the instant, and felt puzzled and vexed. He knew that she changed colour quickly, but why should she flush at the mention of his secretary's name? "I had a long talk with him," he continued, watching his wife closely, . "and I persuaded him to stay. I have raised his salary again, although I don't think money was his reason. He is hot a brilliant man, not a man to ! get orr In the world without influence. He is too-apt to make brusk speeches to important people, and to blurt out the truth when it is not necessary to speak at all. Still, he knows niy ways; he is methodical, honest, and a gentleman, and the son of my old college chum. A yet stronger reasoji with me for retaining' him in my sel'vice is tliat I owe nob'only my life but yours to his timely bravery, a quality which he has, of course, inherited from hi§ father." .

seemed to have lent to Iris a dignity and a serious reserve to which she hnd formerly been a stranger. In a square-out dinner-gown of white velvet, with diamonds gleaming in her oars and hair, she looked to the full six or seven years older than she really was: while, in evening dress, under artificial light. Lord Mallyon, always handsome, graceful and dis-tinguished-looking, was seen at his best. "I am afraid,'" be presently observed, with a smile, "that Gordon is a woman hater." He waited, and Iris felt constrained to speak. "Why do vou think so?" she asked. "Well, he is by no means ill-looking in spite of his shock hair;, and his underhung jaw. But he scorns alike dancing and lawn-tennis and afternoon calls, and I have never heard him express the least admiration for any woman —except my neice Dagmar." He was looking hard at Iris, but this time she did not change colour. "I'don't wond-,r that anyone should admire'Dagv- . * slip said. "I think she is the hk;L peautiful creature I have ever seen."

Iris did not speak. Involuntarily her thoughts flew hack to that scene on hoard the \ sinking ship, when, in the fog and mist, she and Drogo stood hand in hand. Her silence irritated Lord Maliyon. Until this moment it had not once occurred to him that a handsome secretary of four-and-twenty was an undesirable fellow inmate in his house for a Jjride of nineteen; He had no reason for supposing that Drogo or Ins had ever met until this day since they both arrived in England, but he did not like the pensive interest of Iris' eyes Girls are so romantic; was it possible that she cherised some spark of sentiment for the man who had risked his life for hers ? His second marriage had had the effect of making Lord Maliyon intensely jealous. With his usual intuition he had riot only discovered that his young wife" in no Avay returned the extravagant affection which he lavished upon her, but he also guessed that she liked him less now than before they had sworn life long vows at the a|tar. To Iris, brought up in even greater ignorance of life than the average English lady, marriage had meant little more than a name, and she had only looked forward to dedicating her life in devout gratitude to the greatest and best of men she had ever known. But to Lord Maliyon she was a new and lovely plaything, a creature whose youth and freshness were to renew his own; her shrinking timidity and modesty charmed him, and the gentle grace, savouring a little of resignation, with which she filled her present high station, made him hourly commend his own foresight in securing a girl at once so beatytiful and so discreet. Already lie had learned that he might influence her, lead her, command her unhesitating obedience, but that he could not understand her. Away behind those corn-flo Aver blue eyes lay a mind and soul he . could not touch, thoughts he might never know, possibly—and this idea pained him greatly—capabilities for ardent love such as he himself could never hope to awaken within her. "If I could have met her thirty-.'icn years ago!" he had sighed, and then dismissed the notion angrily as a futile regret. If those intervening years of ambitious scheming, of, long spells of intellectual overwork alternating with intrigues, at which some people in society hinted, but the details of which were known to very few, if these experiences and their effects could lie blotted out and forgotten, he might have found himself more in key with the childlike purity and ?inccrity of this girl-wife, young enough to be his own grandchild. Yet to-night as husband and wife sat facing each other in the cozy little tapestried chamber in use fordinners at which no guests were invited, the difference in their years was by no means so marked as might have been expected. Even those few days of married life

"Then you must have been neglecting your mirror," he said, with a courtly bow. "But certainly Dagmar is handsome enough to move even .Gordon's unimpressionable nature. The point to which lam leading is this: I believe the lad to be such a woman-hater that he wants to leave this house simply and solely because you have come into it." If Lord Mallyon had meant to surprise Iris into a bliish, he was certainly successful. All over her face and neck the colour rushed; she could feel the warm blood tingling in her cheeks—could feel, too, her husband's eyes upon her—and a sudden constraint and wretchedness fell upon her. She was no longer free even to blush when another man's name was: : mentioned; worse than that, she could not discipline her thoughts; could not banish from them thememory of those talks with Drogo in the Flower Walk and in the cloisters at Westminster Abbey. A space of many, many years, instead ot days, ' seemed to stand between her and that sunny half-hour under the trees in Kensington Gardens, when, with thefirst faint stirring of love at her 'heart, she listened with downcast eyes to .Drogo's voice repeating those lines of Browning's: "While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had been unstifled, Seems the whole work of a lifetime, that away the rest have trifled."' Why did these lines rise in her mind now, as though accusing her of spoiling her own ,life and Drogo's too." The colour faded out of her cheeks. She was almost as white as her velvet gown, but her voice was measured' and steady when she spoke. "I know very little of Mr Gordon. I do not think heTikes . me. .; 1% he wishes to leave you, why retain him against his will?"It was almost the first time since their marriage that she had spoken so many consecutive sentences; certainly the first time she had ventured' upon giving anything like advice to her distinguished husband. Never prone to talk much, unless drawn out of herself by some sympathetic' companion, she had taken refuge in silence from the newness and strangeness of her position. Already the Lord Mallyon who was her husband appeared altogether unlike the Lord Mallyon who had been her kindest friend, and still more' unlike that eloquent, patriotic, and 1 high-minded: Jasper Mallyon, whose hrilTiant speeches she had read aloud to hex father during-the long winter evenings by the fireside in Richmond, Virginia. Her husband was watching hor with a jealous keenness. "I have told you my reasons For keeping Gordon/'' he said in reply to her. "And if he really has the bad taste not to like you, as you suggest, I shall benefit at least by his determination to avoid you at meal-times. Formerly, when T dined at home, Gordon kept me company, but he has always the excuse of overwork for having his dinner in the breakfastrooin adjoining the library." No more words pased between them on the subject, and before they rose > from the dinner table an interruption I occurred which served to divert the I thoughts of both Lord Mallyon and ' Tris into a different channel. "Miss Mallyon, my lord, has just diiven up, and would much like to see you and my lady, if it is not disturbing you." "Oh, poor Dagmar," exclaimed his, "She has been so ill." "We will join Miss Mallyon in the drawing-room immediately," said Lord Mallyon, and drawing his bride's hand through his arm, he entered the vast reception room, decorated with amber silk hangings, and mirrors as high as the painted ceiling, where Dagmar awaited them. The girl was strangely pale, and out of her beautiful, thin face, her great eyes shone 'larger and brighter than ever. She was dressed in a neat-dinner-gown of black lace, with a furlined cloak about her shoulders; this she throw off as she ran 'impulsively forward and caught Iris in her arms. (To be Continued.)