"Mrs Lorrimer's Folly."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 24 May 1913, Page 2

"Mrs Lorrimer's Folly."

(OURSLRiaL

By Charlotte M. S.aniey. Author of "Edna's Vow," "His C ountryCousin," "How an Oath Was Kept," "A Wo man Wronged."

CHAPTER Xlll.—Continued

Nothing could bo learned of Mrs Lorrinver. Mr Ellinger, the gentleman ra whose employ Fred had sailed for England, had been unable to furnish any information as to her movements beyond the f jet that she had been ill i.iimediate}? after learning of bho shipwreck, but had rallied with surprising resolution and gone to Boston t« see the parties who had picked up the stewardess and the child. He—John. Ellinger—had paid her j small sum of money, which Fred ' had left for her, and would have added to/it, but she refused it, calling it "blood irmoney." In like manner, she had declined his offers of .service and! friendship, declaring that she regard'him as her "evil genius, and owed to. him all. the sorrows of her life." Piqued at this injustice, John had let her alcme* for a. few days, and -when his pity overcame his pique, and he went to look for her—found the bird had flown. Her friend, Miss Clare, had also disappeared. Dick, after a dose and tedium search, gave up the hope of finding hor. "Fred was my cousin," he explained to John. "I should like to have seen his widow, and a.scertainod her circumstances. I might 'have brought her some com fort... You'll lot mo know at that address"—landing his cardI—-"if 1 —-"if ever yon get any word of her."

Not a word did he breathe about the child. He could tell her that himself when he found her. And, on the other, hand, if she Avere riot to have the: child it was Bertha's,-and the less littown of its true parentage the bjfrterl So he told John ribthing abouWt, although he now knew'that .both-be and Lillian supposed it to hav t e been drowned. '<We'll tell her, if necessary .and advisable ,when we get the chance, but we wqn't tell him," he said to Bertha. "She don't seem overfriendly with him, anyway. Poor Fred's legacy is your* for "the present, Bertha, at any rate!" And, gentle and pitiful as Bertha was, she rejoiced that this should be J so. She had loved and cherished j "Fred's boy" now for nearly two months, and her heart clung closely to him. "I wish, if it may be without doing his 'mother a wrong —I wish he may bo mine all, and mine always!" she said. "My own child always!" He was her own for two years, at j any rate, growing and thriving like a beautiful flower under the the warmth of her loving care. He could run about as well as any of them, and talk i'"d laugh for three —was healthy, and sturdy, and strong, and called her and Dick "mother" and '^father"; in short, hid grown to be 'heir own child," indeed, from whom she no longer ever thought of being parted, when one day—loag after they had ceased to look for it—newsi came of Lillian.

She was married. John Ellinger wrote briefly that this was the first, intelligence he had ever heard of her. and that it might be relied upon as true, for he himself knew the gent''" man. He inclosed a small paragraph from a. newspaper, and added that he understood she had gone to England, with her new husband, for their wedding tout. The newspaper paragraph was as follows: "Married, on Thursday, by the Rer H. Lewis, Sir Gilbert Holme, Baronet, of Holme Marior, Cheshire, England, to Mrs Lillian Lorrioiar, of New York." Bertha and her husband sat for a few. seconds, looking silently into each other's face, quite aghast. "Well," said Dick, at last, "that's news with a vengeance 1 M<j-'rin' And to a baronet! 'Lad'y.Hpl'ne'!" "9o 9oon!" Bertha sighed sorlawfully. "Pool- Fred! I may his legacy now. Dick I" And she caught the child to her breast, ".May I not?" P\k nodded.

"I guess you'll never be Asked for him. She knows he was not lost with Fred, blesjs you ! At least if she went to the ship's office in Boston, they'd tell her the child the stewardess carried was fully two years old, and therefore couldn't be hers! They told nae so! But she was wonderfullv pretty, it seems, arid very young, and a featherhead, no doubt, else wouldn't she hare .thought of coming to you and me Ah! now this lwfcranet has consoled her! But we'll keep the child. He'll find no better stepfather than he has already in me, and odds if she'tl be half the mother that you are. • If I'd heard of her clinging to the hope of finding her child, and refusing to believe him dead, I'd have given him to her. but not now—not now! .No,, we'll keep him!" —he stooped and kissed the boy—"we'll keep Fred's legacy!" And thus poor Lillian's fondest hopes were by her own act frustrated. There was no one to tell Dick Saville how she had clung to and lived upon tlie hope he had spoken of—how she had married only to have means wherewith to pursue the search. .No one to tell him that she had thought of him, but knew not where to find him, and how at last, despairing of accomplishing anything alone, she had accepted, the hand of one who swore to devote himself to her serrice. "It would be such aa» easy matter for the rich Ladv Holme to pierce this mystery," Sir Gilbert assured her. And she believed and trusted him.. Alaa, poor Lilliaa.T

CHAPTER XIV. Dick Saville was wrong when he his wife that Lillian knew her child had not been lost with its father. He forgot, or did not sufficiently appreciate tie caw's© she had

(To be Continued.)

to believe that Fred had made it the companion of his voyage. It was impossible that she should know •anything to the contrary; but for all that it is certain that -when she visited the ship office in Boston and ascertained that the dead child could not [ have been her baby, a something that was scarcely a hope—a wild fancy, a mysterious instinct, or perhaps an inspiration from Heaven—sprang up into sudden life within her heart, and kept her grief and anguish from utterly overwhelming her. "He may be living still," •sb esaid to Rose. "No /matter how wild, how improbable the chance that one hopeless infant should escape that wreck, it is not utterly impossible. Things quite as strange have happened. Remember that Indian story —of the settlers whose eldest child had strayed in the wild forest, and who went to seek for it, leaving a sleeping babe at home. They found their boy and brought him Wno, ouly to find that the Indians hid been at their cabin and had burned it to the ground. The babe was gone, but in the smouldering ashes boneg were found, and sqme remnants of clothing burned and charred, which the wretched mother recognised. 'No one doubted the baby's f.'.te—the Indians had burned her in her bed! And yet this -was not so. Years afterwards the another found and recognised her child —then a member of a tribe of Indians, who hacl reared her a>s their own. And even as that ba.be escaped the flames, why may not mine the waves? I will hope it, Rose; I will hope and pray for it! And I will live on that hope until I find my child, or until both hope and I die out together." Who could have had the heart to discourage her? Not Rose, at any rate. Sho thought silently: "It is a Avild hope, indeed. But perhaps God has given it: to comfort her. Poor Lillian! I shall say nothing against any fancy, however wild, that can ligjhten her load of grief." And .she did not. She sought, indeed, rather to strengthen her friend's hopefulness than to dispel it. And Lillian lived and endured, leaning on this woefully' frail reed of hope and possibility, without .whose support her heavy load of trouble would probably have crushed her utterly. She had eonce-'vec! a superstitious horror of John Ellinger, or rut her- of the evil influence which she imagined he had been fated to exercise upon her life. "We ware happy until he came, she would sigh." ' "Arid now—what are we now? He has destroyed us! Though meaning us nothing but good, he has wrought us nothing but evil, and I -shall never find my child again ♦if he has a shore in the seeking. I | must escape him. He is my evil I genius!"