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Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 124, 7 March 1941, Page 7

about my aunt deciding to go with the tour!” “It makes no difference,” Salt said. “No, I suppose not. She knows nothing about uS.”“No reason why she should find cut. I’m afraid I consider it our business, exclusively!” “I don’t want her to know,” Bridget said awkwardly. ' Sho looked at him, not knowing how to convey what she meant. She meant to say that it would be embarrassing to be publicly married—yet not nnn’ied. But he said nothing, and in a nument they were in the foyer of the Tasman Hotel. Sho sat, in the deep armchair, beside the small modernistic glass table with its ash-tray full of cigarette butts. He seemed abstracted. He glanced at her with an odd look in his eye, then turned away, as he said: “Yes, since you aunt has decided to go ahead, I don’t see that we have anything to worry about. I agree that it woulcl be awkward if people knew that we’re married. We’ll just go on as ordinary acquaintances, as though nothing had happened.” “Yes,” said Bridget. She wanted to tell him how much she felt he had done for her, and then aslo him jl lie believed in her innocence. She was trying to find words to begin when he turned on her suddenly, throwing away the cigarette ho had just lighted. “But there’s just one thing in which I do .intend to exercise the prerogative of a husband!” His voice was emphatic and stern, as she had never heard it before. The hot colour in her cheeks expressed an incredulous doubt, a wild surmise. What he said was. far, far removed from anything she expected. “The old-fashioned duty of a husband was to keep his wife in order and improve her mind as best lie might!” His tone took on a certain grim liveliness. “I want to make it quite plain to you that though I think you’ve a great deal of physical pluck, you’ve a lot to learn in other ways. Next time you take a fancy to somebody’s property, it may be a book, or a pearl necklace, or perhaps it will be a handbag—l want you to remember that no one' can get away with things like that indefinitely!” He came round the table towards her; she got up, sho was stunned with horror. “No!” sho cried. “No! You don’t believe that! I didn’t it’s not true!” “Now listen!” ho said. “You may think because I got you out of a hole that I think nothing of these things! A theft is a theft, and it’s a mean thing at any time. What’s more, tho next .time you do it, I may not be at hand to fish you out of the soup!” “No!” she cried wildly, sobbing with tho shock of it. “No! No!” (To Bo Continued).