Lady Marjorie's Love

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 9 April 1913, Page 2

Lady Marjorie's Love

(OUR SERSAL

By Carl Swerdna Author of "To the Uttermost Farth ing," "A Mere Ceremony, A Fight for Honour," Eto.

CHAI'TKR XXl[.—Continued

"Norah, how wa s it? In tlie inane of Heaven how did it all como about? I have boon in the dark, utteily in the dark, .since the blow-fell. I am in the dark still. We both are. It has all been speculation, conjecture, supposition. That letter you left it told us nothing—l' suppose it was meant to tell us nothing!" He stopped before lier, lor he had been pacing rapidly up and down, his movements as vehement as his speech. "Good heavens, do you know that wq are absolutely ignorant of who the man was, what his name, even where you met him? I had a fancy—'at-my wits' end to comprehend it all —that it must have been in that wretched country place where you had been staying. Was it?" "Yes," she answered: faintly. "I was right, then!" He paced to and fro, and halted again. "iNorah," hoiiV was it? What brought it about? If you had been an empty-headed girl, an ignorant, frivolous child, heedless, weak, thoughtless, it would have been at least understandable; hut you, a woman, beautiful, pioxid, with coui;a<se, intelligence, spirit, resolution, how did it come about?" ! "I loved him !" she answered. I The tone rather than the words j struck him mute, still more the look with which sh evnoke them. In the moment of his silence she' rose, putting her hands upon his shoulders, fixing her wide, shining eyes upon b-s. " • "f loved him!" she repeated slowly. "Listen to my only excuse, Geuard, the only palliation of my folly and" worse than folly that I can offer to you, the only wretched plea that I can urge in my own defence. Ah. my dear, all the qualities you have cited—l suppose I possessed them once—are of little use to a woman when she has given lier heart away; • they can't serve her, they can't hold her hack! I . gave Mm mine. ! Through him I have suffered very | dreadful misery; I have given you — and one that I love still better than 1 you—pain that no remorse can ever atone for; I have shamed myself, I have shut the door of the home where ' I was happy! It makes no difference. I love himf ' _ | "You love him now, 18 he asked infredulously. . •'Better than my life!" she an-j Mvered. How fervently and entirely she meant it was shown by the kindling her face. Shame and .sorrow were lest in the glow that made it beautiful. Wibli an irrepressible revulsion of feeling—too .strong at the moment for control —he stepped back from her. 'Who is the man?" he demanded sternly. The change in him was too harshly sudden to escape her notice; the glow faded into whiteness ; she trembled. "Why do you —of what <use is it to' ask?" she said falter ingly. "He and I have an account to settle —mine, yours, our father's. Give me his name." "No." "You will not.?" "I will nob. Don't ask me. It is j useless, 'Gerard." A man who did 1 not understand her might-have tried to frighten or to per- i suade her; he had seen that look and heard that tone before, and knew that j she was to be neither coerced nor cajoled ; there were times when her will wag inflexible. Wise enough to understand, he struggled with and controlled himself, putting his arm affectionately about her with aii air, -of yielding the point. In the hot height of his passion the effort cost him something, but he was self-reproach-ful for his lapse into anger against .her, and resolutely made it to spare her. "Norah, I'll not urge that now. If I spoke harshly 1 am sorry, my dear. I heg your pardon. I'll not ask you to mention his name; let him go far the cowardly cur and scoundrel he is!" Rage sprang up in him in spite of himself, and she winced with a gesture of entreaty and a sound' of pain. "There, there —forgive me! I didn't mean to say that. I don't want to hurt you, Heaven knows! I'll not sky another syllable about him; the past is passed. What you have to do, what we all have to do, is to forget it as goon as we can. Yes it is difficult to do, I know'"—as she made a gesture of hopeless dissent — "but not impossible. I'll take you home to-morrow." "Home?" The start she gave removed her from his arm. "Home, Gerald?" ■ He looked at her in wonder, puzzled by a change in hen- iwhioh wag not comprehensible to him. Was it that she doubted, dreaded? He tried to reassure her, to set her right. She ohecked him with a rapid touch of her fingers on hig lips. "I am not going home, Gerald. I thought you understood. I must go liaelr " "Back? To him?" j "To him," She spoke humbly, her face like a stone. He gazed at her in enraged, bewildered amazement. That the miserable common story had had the miserable common ending, that she was

f flung aside, deserted and cast away, a plaything won, broken, and powerful to charm no longer, had been the instant conclusion to which his first sight of her had forced him. And now upon her wild grief, her entreaties f°r pardon, her admitted shame, came this declaration, stunning him. Of her own will, her own resolution, she was going back. He stood looking at her, striving to believe, adjust, reconcile. .'Stubborn determination was in her very air; her hands hung clenched. Recovering himself, he caught them in his own. "Not that, 'Norah! That shall never be. I won't say that you must be mad to think of it, but I do say that I should be mad to let you de. it. Worse than mad —a scamp, an idiot! Go -bank?" He kindled. "Good Heaven, do you know what you say? Do you know what you are trying to do? This man—you force me to speak of him—has treated you as only a villain and a dastard oould treat you, and now, when your home waits for you, when your father waits for you, and when love and forgivenness wait for you, you will fling them all away to go hack to him! Are you utterly infatuated, or are you mad, indeed? You shall /not go!" j "I must go! Don't force me, Ger- | ard, to remind you that I have no j right to say what I shall or shall not do!" ' It was true, and he knew it; but he had never expected to hear it from her lips. Pain, mortification, and im,patients showed themselves in his .face, a,s he let her hands go. As he made the movement, she catight his arm and clung to it, fondly, entreatingly. "Oh, don't turn awav from me, Gerard! After you have been so patient with me, so kind to me, don't be angry at last! You must let me go, dear, and let me go alone. And you must not tell our father that you ' have seen me, not for a little while. | It shall not he for long, and you must let me go, Promise me!" 1 Her voice, her tone, her look en(treated, but there was a latent power of defiance in her to which he was not blind. And it was but too true that of right to control her he had none. He made a movement of angry irresolution. I "Norah, if I let you go back, if I , let you do this, I shall feel that I'm acting like a scoundrel and a fool!" ! "You will he doing the wisest and the kindest.thing that it is possible to do," she' answered. She paused, her hands clenched as they dropped at her sides; a curious struggle was visible in her, a struggle that turned her white to the lips. "I was never a liar, Gerard!" she said slowly, j "You knew it in the old days, believe it now. Let me go alone as I came; , don't try to trace me; say nothing .of having seen me. It was weak to j come, I know, but I longed so to see . you and to heard a word of him! Do 'tliis for me, and I promise solemnly that in a few days—a week at most — you.shall both know!" "Shall know what? Where you are?" "Yes, yes! That and more—more than I can tell you now!" she said agitatedly. "Only trust me, Gerard, for a few day as the greatest kindness you can do me!" (To be Continued.)