THE PRISONER'S SISTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1938, Page 10

THE PRISONER'S SISTER

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS

(Author of “Velvet and Steel”)

CHAPTER XXII .—Continued. Lise seemed quite satisfied, teased Stuart about his foolishness in wanting to protect Julie from his relatives when there was no doubt about their losing their hearts to her, and so the matter was settled. “You’ll come and stay here with me for a week,” she said to Julie. “And we’ll we’ll do everything as it should be done. I’m going to make you into something really exquisite—” “You’re going to make her into what?” enquired Stuart, indignantly. “Into something really exquisite. Will you have the patience to put up with me?” she asked Julie. No girl can hear that she is going to be made “really exquisite” without a little flutter of excitement. Julie hardly knew what to say, and Stuart didn't give her time in any case. “Now, Lise, what are you going to do? You’re not going to muck about with Julie and make her into the conventional smart young thing!” he protested.

“How can you think that I would try to do anything so crude —or so impossible!” said Lise, and her tone reminded Julie of the way in which Rand sometimes spoke when he had made up his mind to have his way no matter what be said. Lise had been so kind that Julie’s heart was warmed, and she felt that her intrusion into the family was not going to be so terrifying after all. But there was a lingering sense of mortification in the thought that Rand might think she had sought this marriage with Stuart because of its social advantages. The possibility infuriated her and warred with her gratitude to Lise for her kindness.

CHAPTER XXIII. The strangeness of being an inmate of the Rand household. And it was a stranger who looked at Julie from the mirror ten days later, in the exquisite bedroom in which she was to spend the night at Maidenhead. The face that looked back at her was a little pale, because it was difficult to be quite at ease even though it was only to be very small dinner party consisting of the half-dozen most important elderly relatives. Julie had spent the morning and afternoon shopping in town with Lise, thinking how different London looked when one saw it in the summer through the window of a silent black and silver limousine —from when one tramped those crowded pavements on foot in the bitter winter looking for work and not finding it. As a result of the day’s transactions, Julie couldn’t deny that the stranger in the mirror was beautiful and exotic in a fashion that she had not imagined she could be. They had cut off most of her hair and waved and curled it with ingenuous simplicity close to her head so that she looked like a Greek boy. Subtle shadows added to the size and mystery of her eyes. She had to admit the genius in Lise’s choice of a severely simple Chinese blue dinner frock, with its innocently collared neckline, saving her appearance from the least hint of exaggeration, so that i she could look exotic without ceasing to look fresh and girlish. Julie felt very peculiar at first; when she ventured out of her room in a tremor of nervousness she almost clung to Stuart in her fright when she saw him.

Stuart looked at her and seemed torn between doubt and admiration; he cursed Lise for making her unrecognisable; then he said that she was lovely. The dinner was quiet and dignified. Julie’s nervousness was intense at first, though she believed she succeeded in concealing it. The worst thing was that she didn’t know if they all knew about Tom or whether Lise had seen fit not to mention that she had any connection with him. There were the Bradhursts, who had been Stuart’s guardians until he came of age. Another aunt, the widow of a millionaire shipowner; a bachelor uncle from the Foreign Office, and two ederly maiden cousins. They were all very gracious. Whether they knew about Tom or not, Julie was appalled by the restraint with which they concealed the curiosity they must have felt about her.

But after dinner the " two maiden cousins went out of their way to be kind. Mrs Bradhurst invited Julie to stay in Devonshire; and there was something so immediately attentive to her needs in the small courtesies of the men that Julie felt that she had had no difficulty in making a good impression there. • Afterwards, when they had all made their sedate departures, Lise said: “You see how perfectly simple it is!”

And Julie felt finally reassured. If Lise had said more, Julie might have feared that she was not so well satisfied. How strange it all was! Six months ago she had thought herself the most unfortunate girl in the world. Now she had to admit that she was one of the most fortunate. She had no worries—nothing to look forward to but one long round of pleasure, the gracious luxury of living in surroundings like these! It would have turned any girl's head. It certainly put Julie’s into a whirl. " “Happy, darling?” said Stuart, as they went out to look at the river sliding glitteringly past the shadows of the willows under the summer full moon. “Oh, yes, Stuart!" She clung to him when he kissed her, hardly knowing whether she was happy or not. It all seemed like a dream. “Ferris will be back next week,” Stuart told her. “Lise had a message from Turrell to let her know this evening.” He felt Julie stiffen in his arms, and wondered why. Julie was thinking: “I could be ever so happy if it wasn’t for him! He’ll spoil everything, make me feel how utterly out of place I am, how I’m intruding—!” Even as she though it she knew it was unfair. Rand had never consciously treated her as an inferior —his manner was sometimes overbearing, but it was the same towards everyone. “What’s the matter?” asked Stuart tentatively, breaking in upon the sudden angry turmoil of Julie’s thoughts. “I think I must be tired,” said Julie in a tone of forced cheerfulness. I “What a day! Lise is simply wonder-

ful to me, Stuart.” And Stuart said: “Who wouldn’t be?” CHAPTER XXIV. Parties, theatres, dinners in expensive restaurants, suppers in fashionable dance clubs—Lise insisted on a round of entertainment for Julie. On the fourteenth of July she and Stuart were to be married; they had already found a charming little old-fashioned house in Cambridge, and were thinking of furnishing it. On the tenth of June Rand came back from Sweden. Julie was staying with Lise for a week and she was still there when he arrived.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon and she was in the open-air swimming pool behind the house, practising diving, while Lise was lying down, and Stuart was in town working. She was standing on the highest diving platform, all wet and shining like a mermaid, poised ready to dive, when she saw Rand standing below gazing up at her. He had evidently just walked out of the house. The sight of him was such an unaccountable shock to Julie that she faltered, decided to dive after all, missed her balance, and came down flat on the water with a stinging crash. When she came up, bruised and ashamed of having made such a poor show, he had come round to the edge of the bath nearest to her, and was laughing. He bent over to say in a serious tone:

“My dear Julie, hadn’t you better learn to dive from the lower platforms before you try the high one?” “Something must have put me off,” said Julie, breathlessly, her face on fire with the smack of the water. “The unexpected sight of something—something one doesn’t want to see—often does!”

As soon as she had said it she knew that it was a childish remark to have made.

His expression, and his next words, made her realise too, that for some reason he couldn’t take such remarks in good part any longer: “Who is looking after - Lime Grove while you’re learning to dive?” he enquired, rather coldly. “Mr Turrell sent a man down, an Italian named Pollenti,” Julio said. “I was due for a week’s holiday, Mr Rand, anyhow. I —l had been at Lime Grove for over six months.” (T don’t mind. Take a years holiday if you want to!” “Well, I shall be leaving in any case next month.” . , “You and Stuart are getting married then, are you?”

“Yes.” “Well, you’d better not call; me ‘Mr Rand’ in future or people will think I 'And ie he°walked off. Julie dived to hide her crimson face,. and when she came up again ± he toWherselh Oh, h 7fter h Tha? he had done that night at Lime Grove'in the yard his manner W A *at she would break her engagement d J d Stuart just to show not care for anything that the tamuy C °She its madness at’ oncehow could Rand annoy her so much as to drive Stuart out of her head? Julie went up to her room from the swimming pool and laid down. She felt oddly depressed; , and then when J was time to for dinner she felt a sudden passionate interest in looking as well as possible. Ther was to be a small party of some of Stuart’s younger friends. But when the mald y came g to help Julie, and Lise came to look at the result, she felt acutely shy about appearing in the frock she and Lise had bought for the occasion. It was made of some filmy gold material, with big shiny gold com spots, cut on classic lines, and moulding her slender figure in a manner which was merely in the fashion, but made Julie feel suddenly terribly selfconscious. , Lise and the maid, however, went into ecstasies over her; and Julie had to dismiss her shyness as mere nerves. There was a long staircase down to the lounge, and going down it was like making an entrance on to a stage. Lise was already there, and half the guesfs had arrived when the maid had finished putting the last tendril curl into position on Julie’s head and she was able to go down. Rand was there, standing with his back to the staircase, almost at its foot, talking to someone. Every pair of male eyes was fixed upon Julie as she came down the stairs, and several female voices were hushed. It would have been a little triumph for Julie if Rand had not been there, if a pulse of sheer fright had not been beating so suffocatingly in her. throat. A sort of little silence fell, and in the middle of it Rand turned round, saw her, and ejaculated with his usual directness.

“Ye gods!” After Julie had been introduced about the room she found herself with Lise on one side, and Rand on the other. He looked her up and down in his usual way, but with a curiously veiled expression so that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Lise put her arm round Julie’s shoulders, and half whispered: “Don’t you think she’s lovely, Ferris?” “Ravishing!” said Rand, and added: “But I had a weakness for Cinderella among the cinders.” In her present situation the allusion to Cinderella was a flick on the raw. It was unforgivable. Even Lise looked surprised. That rather settled the relations between Julie and Rand. He moved to his Dover Street flat on the following morning, but whenever he came to Maidenhead there was the same tension between them. Julie discovered a hitherto unknown flair for sarcasm in herself; the way in which a single remark interjected, into the conversation could raise a laugh against a person; she used it against Rand whenever the opportunity arose, and he very soon adopted a cold and gloomy attitude towards her, which she told herself she much preferred to his remarks about Cinderella. A few days after his return he announced that he would be going out to New Zealand; it appeared he had a contract early in June to build a railway over a mountain pass, and he expected to be away for six months or more.