CHAPTER XII.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 174, 28 July 1876, Page 6

CHAPTER XII.

CAPTAIN MARTEN COMES HOME, AND WHAT FOLLOWED. The after-reflections of Rosiue were not pleasant; they were a mingling of relief that a duty was done, and sore grief at the way in which it was accomplished. The consciousness of the wrong she had done both herself and Laura, in being the repository of her secret, deepened when she felt herself relieved of the obligation, and she determined no long time should elapse before she would unburden her mind to Dr. Hartland or the Colonel. She sat in the drawing-room alone the evening after Laura's departure. Colonel Hartland and his lady were out, and the Doctor, who since her convalescence had never sought her society, had gone to the library. The impression came upon her that now was her time, and coming where Dr. Hartland was smoking, his head thrown back, his feet in a chair, and his eyes shut, she said in her sweetest tones, a little tremulous, " Brother Ned, may I speak with you ?" He raised himself and turned upon her one of his penetrating glances. " I have waited for you many days, Rosa," was his reply. " But you did not give me an opportunity," she said, seating herself on a footstool by his side. " You have been offended with | me, and never told me why." i " Rosine," he replied, sharply, turning away from her as he spoke, " you know very well the cause of my displeasure — I should say my disappointment. I thought when I met you, there was | one of your sex who would not and could not deceive ; but when ' you lent yourself a tool to Laura Marten's machinations, my con- ' fidence in you was shaken." | " Edward/ she said, hiding her face in her hands, " I have | done very wrong, but jou are unjust to me. If I was a tool to Laura, it was an unwilling one, and I have thrown off the yoke. I hope it may be a lesson to me." The Doctor laid by bis cigar, and turning 1 about again, he asked, |" Rosa, do Laura Marten and Aleck correspond through, you ?" " Yes. I knew I ought not to make a secret of it; his letters came enclosed in mine, but they arranged it without my consent, or even knowledge. But that is not all," she continued, mustering courage from his kindly manner, " there is a greater secret which I obtained and kept very unwillingly ; it has burnt in my heart ever since it rested there ; they are engaged to be married." I " Good heavens !" exclaim cd the brother, ttarting to his feet!

almost overturning Eosine in his excitement. " Engaged ! Laura Marten engaged to Aleck ! Her heart is blacker than I thought. But on the whole, it -was fortunate perhaps that it was not a public engagement; after her course with Le Compte all other promises must be at an end, unless a man's a fool ! but now I think of it, Rosa, Aleck assured me only a day or two before he sailed that he had no intention of marrying this woman." " She wears a betrothal ring with their initials, and the motto, ' Omnia vincit amor.' " " Fools !" cried he, impatiently,' " " Aleck will be charmed with my hist epistle, in which I described the campaign of his affiancee with this scape-grace Le Compte. It will be a bitter pill if he cares for the worthless girl ; but I'll risk their hearts,'** he added, lighting a fresh cigar, "such hearts as Laura's might love on continually, ' the object still changing, the sympathy one,' to thevgnd ofj the chapter,lwithout. fear of cracking, much less.of breaking. Do you call that love, Eosa?" " It don't seem like it to me," she'replied timidly. " I hope it never will, but at your age you can hardly be expected to know much about it. But never have a secret of this kind," he added, laying his hand on her head ; " young as you are, you are old enough to know that if this engagement had been made public in the beginning, Laura could not have gone on as she has ; I and 1 believe it was her plan to keep it secret, that she might flirt to heart's content during Aleck's absence. Don't you see, my little ! one, that she was acting a lie ?" i "I do, I did see it," she replied earnestly, " it made me wretched, and I expostulated with her; indeed, I have hardly had a light \ heart since I have known it ; her conduct seemed so wicked, it I troubled me to know, that I was a party, in a way, to her untruthi fulness." " This trouble helped to make you ill, and retarded your recovery. Eosa, you will be better now you have told it. Never i bear such another burden [while lam in the land of the living. I shall tell Captain Marten ! of this, that he may keep a strict watch over his dutiful daughter, unless .she finishes the plot by running off with L 3 Compte." I Captain Marten was|[exasperated Ibeyond 'measure when Dr. i Hartland made known to him the secret of Laura's engagement. j He cursed and swore roundly in true sailor fashion; said, "if she hadn't more sense than to quit a nice young naval officer for this upstart adventurer, she deserved to be shut up in a convent for the rest of her natural life :" and laid his commands with more force than ever upon the sister under whose care he had placed his daughter, not to suffer the girl to go "out without herself for company. In this home of her aunt's Laura had only a few months before been wooed by Lieutenant Hartland, and the associations of the present with the past made her reflections anything but agreeable. She was completely caught in her own net — she said repeatedly to herself that she did not care ifor jLe Compte, and she said truly, and yet she could not rid herself of him. She had never believed j him more serious in the flirtation than herself ; he knew of her en- ' gagement and correspondence, but he still pursued her with his attentions in a way that seemed to take it for granted that she was ready for his company, and after the first feeling of vexation with his presumption, scattered by his honeyed flattery, she found herself powerless to resist his will. She remembered how Dr. Hartland had spoken of this will, which she found so powerful, so irresistible — and she was rather relieved when a third, in the person of her father, ordered her away from her enchanter. Mrs. Norris, the mistress of the fine estate to which Laura was J banished, was a weakly-minded person, unfitted to control and 1 scarcely able to influence one with Laura's strong points of character. She had been delighted with the little episode in her usually monotonous life, which had brought her niece and the Lieu- ! tenant to her house, and though she scolded her for her imprudence, when the captain entered into the details of her conduct with Le Compte, her eager questioning about the affair, when Laura was alone with her, manifested the truth that she, after all, did not see wherein her neice w as so very much to blame. Captain Marten was called away by the duties of his ship, but he reiterated again and again his charges both to his sister and daughter. It was not long before Laura, with her attractive exterior, drew about her the young people of the neighbourhood, and before many weeks she was engaged in a round of pic-nics, fishing parties., and moonlight rides, which drove Le Compte quite omt of her mind. A set of tableaux were to come off, in which ghe%as much interested, expecting to taie part in these living pictures; but a sudden and severe cold, for which she was obliged to lay by for a week, prevented her assisting, except as a spectator ; even that was imprudent, as the physician had forbidden her leaving the house. Many young people from town were to assist in the exhibition, and she did not resist the temptation to be present. " Ah, dear," said Mrs. Norris, in the second rising of the curtain for the striking piece, the Sultan and Sultana, "if you were only in the place of that fair-haired, petite girl !" "But, Aunt," Laura replied, "we will imagine her to have been a Circassian slave ; they are small and white." As she spoke, the next scene was announced, " The Game of Life." Laura turned a look towards the stage, and uttered a faint cry, for in the person of the arch-adversary represented therein she recognised Le Compte. She pleaded faintness to her aunt, and almost unobserved she left the company and stepped to the verandah. .Fear, dread, attraction, interest, and repulsion, mingled in Laura's mind as she pandered down the pine walk to the broad river, which lay in the clear moonlight like a thing of life. She forgot her indisposition, her position, everything but the dreaded presence. At the last terrace, before reaching the stream, she paused ; her quick ear caught the sound of a step behind her, her frame became agitated, the powerful unseen influence was near, she could not stir. But in that moment she did rosolve— yes, her

unpraying heart uttered one petition for help and summoning all j that remained of her naturally strong resolution, she turned suddenly upon Le Compte. " You should not. have come here," she said, eagerly ; "there has been enough of this ; we must part." "You speak, ma chere, as if it were an easy thing to part," was the reply, in a low, melodious, l<ut decided tone ; " forever, too — it max f° r y° u > k u^ f° r me > after what has passed, impossible." Laura sunk into a garden-chair, while he poured out his tale of love in no measured words, assuring her in terms that scorched her very soul, that he was in earnest, that a union as his wife had, from the first, been his intention ; this he asserted on his honor. "It can never be, Le Compte/' replied Laura ; " you know it can never be. There are reasons — ." Her voice seemed to come from a' sepulchre, and she had not power to close the sentence. " Love conquers all obstacles," he said gently, yet firmly. " But it cannot obliterate former vows and promises/ sobbed Laura, almost incoherently. " It does on my part, it may on yours; only saythe^word,' and you are mme — mine for ever." " Never ! I will not I" cried she, resolutely, withdrawing her hand from his, and rising from her seat, she whispered in his ear. The words must have been of dreadful import, and they cut deep, for they caused him to stamp bis foot wrathfully, and brought a terrible oath to his lips ; but the excitement was but momentary, his smooth, clear, polished voice was heard again, fearfully distinct in the ears of his trembling victim, as he said, " This need be no barrier to our happiness ; you must fly with me ; there is no time like the present : dancing has commenced at the house, many hours must elapse before we are missed, the silver moon smiles on our project, I will arrange the way.' 3 But he spoke to closed ears. " Led captive at ,his will," had been brought to Laura's mind as she realised the awful nature of his proposals, backed as she knew by a.will which she had learned to dread. Nature gave way, and she fell seDseless at his feet, as suddenly as if she had been smitten by his hand. Le Compte, for the first time in his life of intrigue, was baffled. Elopement had been his design ultimately, but his arrangements were not fully completed ; with Laura yielding to his will, as he had anticipated after a brief struggle, he could easily make a way on the spur of the moment, but with Laura in a fainting fit, it was quite a difficult matter. He carried her to the water and tried all the means in his power to restore her. unsuccessfully. He saw at length with the eye of a physician that the trouble was more than a mere faintness, so bending over her as she lay ghastly in the white moonlight, he muttered a fierce curse if she thwarted him, and returning to the house, the rumor was soon spread through the hall by the servants, that Miss Marten had stepped out for air, and fainted in the pine walk. The house was aroused, and Laura was conveyed to her aunt's still unconscious, where she wandered for weeks and weeks in the mazes of a brain fever.