A SECRET FOE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10152, 23 December 1910, Page 2

A SECRET FOE.

(OUR SERIALS

iy uERTRUDE WARDEN. Author of '■Scoundrel or Saint?" "The Secret cf a Letter,'/ -A Bold lWMotion," "The Wooing of a Fairy," "The Crime oi Monte Carlo," etc.

CHAPTER X Vll.—Con tinned. Lord Mallvon put down the letter. Involuntarily he juiced at his sccrctnrv. Pvo'go v;as leaning his chin on his hiiud thinking out some trifling difficulty; the light was full on his fresh-coloured, red and brown skin, on his cur!-.' dark- hair, and bright brown eves. To the right of where Lord Mallyon sat at his desk, a panel of looking glass was let into the wall; his eyes involuntarily-sought his own reflection, and ho saw the lamp light shine upon his own scant, silver-gray hair, on the deep lines which marked the outlines of his handsome features, and on the furrows which time had ploughed in his skin. And a sudden hatred mingled with despair swept over the great man's mind, which in its chilling force seemed almost like a foretaste of dos.th. CHAPTER XVffi. THE MISSING CLUE.

whom to confide, or from whom she eoidd seek counsel.

The same hidden, hand which dealt this cowardly blow upon Lord Mallyon planned an attack against the happiness of Iris also.

•The first mail on the following morning brought her a typewritten letter, unsigned, and beginning simply "Lady Mallyon." • A sick feeling of apprehension crept over Iris' heart as she spread out the paper, and she hesitated as to whether or not she should not commit the undoubted imprudence of reading an anonymous letter. But curiosity in :i girl of nineteen is strong, and curiosity led Iris to skim the lines at first. The blood rushed to her face as she perceived their import, and she thrust the paper angrily from her, only to take it again, and read every word. It ran as follows: —

"As the sister of a woman whom Lord Mallyon cruelly wronged, I am writing in the interests of our sex to warn you not to trust your husband. I have never seen you; hut what 1 read of the difference* between your age and his, yours must have been, of course, only a match for money. For this Ido not blame you as much as some might do. There are many women too cold to love a man, but who can appreciate luxury and comfort, money and a title. I have good reasons to detest Lord Mallyon, but for you lam sorry, as you cannot know "the nature of the man you married. "With all his eloquence and his brilliancy, he is in politics, as in the exercise of his profession, utterly unprincipled. He can always be bought if the price is high enough, and his word is worthless. Still, these facts hardly affect you. They only tend to augment his fortune and his influence. What is more to the point, is that, occupying as he does, one of the highest legal positions in the land, a favourite at court, and received with acclamation by the highest society, Lord Mallyon was a cruel, neglectful, and faithless husband to his-first wife, whose heart ho broke; and lie has since her death been the hero of more than one disreputable intrigue, which only his matchless cunning has kept out of the divorce court.

All those thoughts occupied Iris' mind while she drove to Mrs Mavrogodato's house to fetch Dagniar, as had been arranged on the preceding evening. Lord Mallyon had been forced to leave the house very early, by reason of his professional engagements. He was occupied ur.cn a great will case, over which the best lawyers m England were at work. Nothing could shave induced Iris to follow the suggestion of her anonymous correspondent and question her husband on the subject of the ladies whose names had been mentioned in-the typewritten letter, and he on his part had no intention of directly questioning her as to her former relations with his secretary. Yet on both sides some constraint was evident when Lord Mallyon took leave of his wife that morning, and the seeds of mischief, which T)agmvar had begun so early to sow, were already sinking into the minds of both wife and husband. Prompted by her daughter, Carlotta Mavrogodato received the new Lady Mallyon with effusion. Bygones should be bygones, she declared, as she affectionately embraced Iris, and tears of real feeling filled her eyes while she recounted to the latter details of her daughter's serious illness. Dagmar was upstairs, busily engaged in superintending the packing of her portmanteau.- Would Iris like to see the doar children who so distantly asked after her? Iris at once assented, and made her way to the schoolroom, where she bewildered nurse was vainly endeavouring to separate Jasper and Helen, engaged in a violent tussle on the floor. The woman rose at the entrance of Iris. Lady Mallyon, wife of the at-torney-general, was a very different person from Miss Travers, the governess. The children for a moment desisted from screaming and pulling each other's hair, and precipitated themselves upon Iris, while the . mother excused-herself and left the 1 room.

' 'The children. are worse than ever since you left, miss—l mean my lady," said the nurse. "For the last hour they have been scratching each other's face over something which they won't show me—something they have stolen for certain."

"We can't hare stolen it if it belongs to nobody," argued Helen. "Pagmar thinks it is hers, and Mr Pitzalan says it is his. And as it cannot belong to both, and'is of no use to .anybody, it may just as well "belong to us, mayn't it, Miss Travers?" "What is it that you arc tal!;'n4 about?" asked Iris.

"If I show you will you 'V.t to take it away?'*

"Were his true career known and published, no self-respecting ..lady would dare receive him; he would ho banished from court, and be compelled to resign 'his professional appointments. If you require names as proofs, ask your husband the true; facts concerning his relations with Lady Amesbury, with the Honourable Mrs Hildred, with Miss Sibil Sinclair, with Madame de la Touche, and with Carrie Whyte.

The promise given, Jf'icn Dicn >d n dirty hand, m wiidi was <c'!'(";'ed a tiny jeweller's c<i"f> m i<l morocco. Opening it she displayed before the eyes of Iris a white velvet interior, with places for a pair of sleeve links with places for a pair of sleeve links. The name "Tiffany, New York," was inscribed on the cover, but of the links themselves nothing'remained but a tiny fragment of gold chain attached to the gold and platinum tennis ball. At sight of the broken sleove-lrrik, Iris started violently. There was no' mistake possible. Here was the missing portion of the little trinket left inside Lord Mallyon's cabin on the Atlantis by the man who had vainly tried to affect his death.

"Only two courses are open to you—to wink at his past, and put up with his future without inquiry, or have your revenge, and he just as quiet and clever in amusing yourself in whatever fashion pleases you best, as he has been in the management of his amorour intrigues." The last evil suggestion contained in this malignane epistle passed harmlessly over Iris' innocent head. She neither noted or understood ifc. The whole epistle profoundly shocked her; but, although'she consigned* it to the flames almost immediately, she had first mastered the names mentioned by the writer, and, try as she would to forget the accusations made against her husband's honour and integrity, they returned again and again to her mind. To her simple eyes, Lord Mallyon, when she first met him, had appeared so very far above all other men that the notion of attributing t ohim human vices and weaknesses would have seemed little short of sacrilegious. She could not love him as a husband should be loved, but she wished to reverence and admire him above all the world. Already she had learned that a marriage such as hers must necessary entail self-sacrifice; she had taken the step, as so many English girls of careful and sheltered training take it, without in the least understanding the duties it involved; but her sence of duty was very strong; her husband was in her eyes lord and master, and she fully intended to make him a loyal and devoted wife. Yet a gulf separated her from the frank, half-childish girl who had stood on board the Atlantis, watching the waves ia the sunlight, and chattering gaily to Lord Mallyon and to Edward Fitzalan. The world had grown older and sadder for her; she had awakened from her day-dreams, and was begin ning to perceive that her ideals were fading in the keen light of day. Ifc was a period of transition for her, and unhappily she had no human being in ——• -"ii ■ '.m*<u m< uu

To make assurance doubly sure, the name of the American maker of this particular ornament recalled Lord Mallyon's statement that he had seen a pair of exactly similar sleeve-links in Tiffany's shop before he left New York. As to the other tennis-racket and ball, which remained intact, Iris and Lord Mallyon had both recognized it fastening Dagmar's collar on the occasion of her visit to Cazalet Lodge; and Iris remembered that Dagmar had given a confused account of the circumstances under which it came into her possession. ,

This discovery greatly shocked and astonished Iris, and she began to closely question the children as to how they had becomed possessed of the case and its contents.

At first they answered her untruthfully, but she at length elicited that Helen had picked up the case from the floor of Dagmar's dressing-room several weeks before, and that.on the preceding evening, as they were playing with it, during Dagmar's visit to Mallyon Court. Mr Fitzalan had caught sight of n, and had tried to wrest it from them, declaring that it belonged to him. "And he gotted dreadfully excited,'' Jasper exclaimed, "and as red as beef. And he said he would give me two shillings for the case. And he said wc was very naughty children, and gotted quite angry and nasty; an' he shook Helen, and tried to snatch it away from her. Then we both screamed and runned up-stairs screaming, an' mama earned out an' we told her he'd frightened us, an' Mr Fitzalan pretended to laugh, an' we went to bed." —"He was real savage, though," added Helen. "If he'd offered five shillings instead of two, I'd have let him had it. I'm tired of the thing and I want to buy a mechanical monkey." Iris reflected a moment. The whole affair was incomprehensible to her; but of one thing she was certain —in the children's hands lay the cine which her husband required to track his would-be murderer. (To be Continued.)