NOVEL

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 390, 29 October 1903, Page 2

NOVEL

CHAPTER XVill.—(Continued.) * I wouldn't pretend to for a moment, I was only preEupposißg a condition of things ordmariiy honourable, and'—-he queerly—«and decent/ •You are too flattering! I » she was beside herself—'if you wish to know, I cue more for his little fluger—lf he had asked me I would have married him. T6S, and poor as he ia I ehcu'.d have been a hundred times prouder tban if I had all the ridiculous titles ia the world,' She flung the words at, him in ungovernable passion, nnd yet at the moment what she saw in fcis eyeß made her half repent. Next moment, with hie words, the saving impulse paased. 'l'm sorry I didn't know your sentiments about titles before,' he said; 'I shouldn't have foicad mine upon you, And may one a9k why you didn't chuck me over and marry this paragon ?* •He is poor; he is too honourable to have asked me.' ' Indeed P Still it would seem hia notions of honour didn't preclude him from making love.' * - ' You are inEultirg!' Bhe cried furiously. ' I wieh I had never seen you. He would havo understood me; ho would never Lave spoken to me so.' Thenjlopecaetle's self-control went. *I wonder you live with me. I wonder you stop with cuch a blackguard as you make me cat. Better go to him; better go to this—this honcurable music-master of yours.' Hebe caught h6r breath. ' Did you mean it ?' she spoVe quietly. ' You see I might take you at your word. Did you mean it ?' ' Oh, certainly, by all means! I—l wouldn't wish to dCtain you. It would boa pity to separate tain souls.' He hushed out, harshly and loud, and strode out of the room, hurling to the door behind him.

CHAPTER XIX. Tht re was no pc ssible doubt about it, the young Lady Hopecaatle was nixing. Lotd Horecastlo and the ex-Hcme Secretary had been cut a distance most of the day, and little mere notice was taken by the two lades of Hebe's absence than to animadvert upon her manners as hestets. But when tee-time came end the men,' Whera ia Hebe V was Hopecattle's first qaestkm. ' Sue has not favoured us with her ecciety si nee break fact,' said his sister. 'Piobtb'y she has gore to the Schyulezs,' supplemented the Dowager, acidly. c Oh, no doubt,' said Hopecattle; yet somehow he did not believe it. He constrained himself to sit and drink tea, if only to persuade himself that there waa nothing wronj;; but with every moment an indefinite foreboding grew. All day loag certain words, spoken quietly after torrents of passion, had hummed in his brain; and a look in his wife's face had eo haunted him. that but for shame of such weakness, he would have made ecme excuse for returning to the house. He left the rocm presently, but hia studiously casual manner lasted him no further than the door. He Lurried upstair? to hia life's boudoir—the rocm was in silence. Ha locked ia their bsdrocm—not there. Then he went out to the slab' s; he cculd not bring himself to ic qui; e of the indoor eeivants. Eei" ladyship, baid a grccm, had gene to Baronstioke. for the mid-Jay up-express; the speaker had diivou h&r in a dog cart; her ladyship led lerseli given the order. ' I hope her ladyship was in plen'y of time V It was all he couli do to lock the grcora ii the face; for a man like Hopecastia that speech was a stupendous piece of acting. The pity was, it was thrown away; are not thesethings always ksown? lligti words overheard by an interested patting h<: net maid, the fsct that her Jadjship lad taken with her a portmanteau not packed by her maid; that her absence being ope Ely commented on at luncheon, she couid have said no goodbyes—these things the whole household knew; before nightfall the village would know too.

Alone in his etuJy, hands pressed on hot temples, Ebpecastie tried to understand what had happened. Whore was H3be ? What did her absence mean ? Sho could not really be gone, not iz.—the worst sense, she was doing this in aager, to alarm him; she would be back to-nigut. At worst she had gone to friends ia London, and he would hear to-morrow.

Once away she would bo sorry foe what eh e had done, a little frightened, t:o, perhaps. He pictured to himself her return; perhaps he wculd k&ip her in suspense *. Jittle—a very li\\lo, only just to see how lovely she was in penitence. He smiltd actually, so vividly had the scene possessed his mind.

But re-act it n came'and "was acute. r nve I She was really gore, and how could he doubt fox a moji.ea'; where f Her

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ABR4NOEMENT.

LADY HOPECASTLE,

BY £• Reid-Matheson. COPYRIGHT

words rang in his ears : ' J might take you at ycur word.' She had gone to this man —this E-usicmaster; and in thes° things there is no return. The Bick misery in his heart flamed into fierce anger against the wife he had so loved. If she meant what she said, if she had really left him, th9n his best hope was never to see her again.

He sat ther6 and thought, and thought till his head was like bursting, and there was a einging in his ears. Several times there came knocks at the door; he called out that he was busy, and could see no one. The interruptions irritated him ?,lm 381 to madness.

They reminded him, too, that there was dinner to face. What eould he say to his mother and the others? And yet,tiience ? His silence, theirs, the servants', would be crying louder tban say words. Ah, that interminable dinner! How he made shift to comtaand himself, and to talk, how he ate without choking, he could never tell, Eor how he got the lie told before them all. «I find Hebe has gone to see frisndg in town.'

Ha watched the servants' movements in an agony of irritation and itnpatiar c ?, and stole sharp furtive glances to see how much tfiey seemed to know. How they dawdled over every act! Hew they gpun out the cours6B! They,, had never been so slow before,- he could have struck them. Would they sever leave the room ? Etfery chance chink of glass or clatter of plate wss a stab to his tortured nerves.

All through that meal Hopecaatle was rehearsing a speech; whea at last it got made, it wab not much. It came in jerks. ' I want to eay something. Hebe has gone, I mean ehe haa left me. I can't go into details. We—we disagreed. I don't want sympathy. If I have been a fool I can take the const quences. I shall be fgad if—-you won't mention her Bame. And now, as I mightn t be—be very good company, perhapß you will excuse me ttnight.' Ha laughed queerly and went out of the room, leaving consternation behind and a family conclave. The Hon, Mrs Siuart Markham deplored the awful scandal, lady Hopecasila atkedwhat you could exptc':? She had long foreseen some tuah catastrophe. Poor Arthur! Oh, the blind folly of men! The ex-Home Secretary attempted Borne Bort of hopefulness and palliation. ' Hebe was bo young; and perhaps things were not really so serious.' But he wbb indignantly eried down, and recoga: sing discretion the better ps,rt, subsided. Meanwhile Hopjcasrie, alone in his study, was busily engaged in convincing himself of hia entire indifference. Break his heart for arun-a-vay wifeP Not he. He Est down at his secretary, and went through hia affairs with much show of energy and coEcantration. But the written lines played a t General Peßt after a maddening fashion; Hopecaatle would read a passage half-a-dozen time?, and then not get the meaning. Ah! his pipe! There was what was wrong j he could nev« work without a pipe in his mouth. He filled and lighted What was the matter with that tobacco ? For the first time since he was a lad, smoking gave Lira a feeling of 'nausea. Ha got up, laid down ais pipe with a loud impatient sigh, and took i-p a new work on agriculture, which ho had began the day bafore and approved, /.-ut a certain pair of paecionate blue eyes hauated the pages, and each sentence as he cama to ic read like this: 'Did you moan it ? I might take you at your word. 1 It was useless Ujiig to read agricul ture in such a book. He sent it acrosß the room with a crash, and a big short word after it, rose and paced up down, thee threw himself into a chair and put his hands to hia head. How infernally it nched 1 a t'iing he was never troubled with. 97bycou!dnot hekeepcaJmP What a tit-bit this would be for the i carriious society journals ! It wonld be a relief when all tbe world knew.

H9 was glad to fin i it only his pride which SDffered, yet caught himself wandering that he felt so little emotion. Hij nearest coLCirn sosmed to be to tide over the next hours or days; his heart felt cold dead within him, like a stone.

iiopecastle sat up, or rather he stayed up into the email hour 3, because—wellhe could not make up his mißd to go to bed. For ail that, he went at last; he did not ca:o to be foußd in his study by the hoacemaids.

13.i0:e he utdressed an impu'.sa came upon him to go into his wife's room; it Wi3 his habit, bnt also he had a sudden lilicaloua kind of fancy that there had boen some big mistake; that be would nttd o and asieap. He opened the door; the light of his candle fell upon the embossed Bilver frame of the large oval dreEsing-gluss, upon the silver trays and brushes, glinted in cut-glass toilet bottles, and caught here and there the pretty knick-knacks on life's dieseing-tabie. And the candlelight fell dim upon an empty bed and unpreEßed pillcwj. So, after all, there

was no mistake. Hopecastle went involuntarily to the side where Hebe slept; it was always his way before undressing. It came to him how, sometimes, with a sott of drowsy coo she would return hi 3 kiss, never so mucb as opening her eyes; or lying quite still to cheat him, she would suddenly put out her arms, and pull his head down to her. Hopecastle turned away, those were not things he cared to remember then. Oa the bed a night-gowj, all tuck and frills and soft billowy lace, lay ready for her ladyship's wear; and across a chair hung a dainty dremng-govn of forget-me-not blue (Hebe's colour) and a pair of little swansdown-bordered blue velvet slippers beside it A fresh angor came to Hopecastle. What a fool the maid was to put out those things when—she must have known \ . . His impulse was to put them away out '■ of sight; but he could not make up his mind to touch them So he went back into the next room and undressed, slowly, to put off the moment of goiss to bed. Why go to bed at all? How absurd habit is, and how ridiculous our human imitations 1 But again, why sit up P Ha was dead tired; and in any case two or three hours would bring to-morrow and the exigencies of a new-day. His head wts like bursting; look where he would in the darknesß his eyea met his wife's as he had last seen them, wide with passion, and yet with a certain wonder and reproach in them too. Where were those eyes now ?

Without con&cious transition, Hopecistle found himsalf by the side of a raging mountain torrent, bearing on its mad course a raft on which crouched a girl with golden hair. And as the whirlißg current bore the raft past where he stood, the girl lifted her f»ce and looked at him with agouiaed blue eyes—those eyes—but uttered no sound. Then b orrcrstruck, he saw, only a few yards away, a fathomless b'ack chasm, towards which the waters bore the raft at racing speed. Frantic, be tried to rush, to stretch cot his hands to the girl; but his limbs were rigid as marble. And all the while the blue eyes looked at lira, as though he might have Baved her if he would. Nearer! Roarer! Oh, the death horror in the eyes ! Ab, God.—over! He sprang up in bed, bathed in sweat; in his head was a noise like the jingle of a hundred bells, and his heart-beats were like a piston's throbbing. "Was it really only a dream ? But what a dream! Could ha ever forget those eyes? Oh, Hebe, Hebe! Tight-clenched in one cf his hands was something all frills and lace; it was his wife's night-gown. He dropped the soft clinging thing as though it burned himj then quick as thought, gathered it to him fiercely, passionately, burying his face so that the great hot drops in his eyes never fell, but soaked away as they sprang, into the ci uO3 pled softness of the laoa and cambric.

Whilst he went, thoughts coursed through his brain like flying shadows, till at last his fagged mind was blank of all but one fixed, overmastering idea. He would go to his wife. He never reasoned it out; it came to him suddenly, as the one thing possible. Tnere wa3 no longer any question of wrong, or of forgiveness; he forgot all but that she waß his wife—that he loved her. She wss unhappy, perhaps in danger; he would go to her. With the resolve there came to him a certain peace—a lull succeeding storm, But again the horrid fear took him like u dagger-thrust. What if he were too late ? If in her despair —. Would day never dawn P The minutes were hours.

Long before breakfast he was ia his etudy, comparicg routes for time, jotting down trains and boats. Before breakfast, too, he had a vkitor—the vicar's wife, pale and distracted. 'I have only ju3t heard—l came at once. Oh, Lord Hopecastle—lrthur—be merciful!' She threw herself upon her knees before him. ' Oh, be merciful, as you hope for mercy.' * What is this ?' he asked her, sternly, refusing to understand. * I cannot talk to you like this.' Ho placed her in a chair, and stood towering above her, indescribably irritated. He had never been able to endure her. ' Don't think I defend her! she has been wickedly wrong. I have noiuflaercs ovor her, but, oh Arthur, for my sake, for the poor vicar's sake—. He is so ill, it will kill him when he knows, he thought so much of her '

' I ihink you must be labouring under some misapprehension'—he interrupted rier, cold and deliberately; ' I don't understand what kind of intentions you are crediting me with; but let me assure you I .have none that could call for tush an impassioned speech,' * Then—then isn't it true, what they are saying ?' 'I don't know what 'thay' may be saying,' he said, 'and it couldn't concern me in sny way.' 'Oh, Lord Hopecaatle, don't pretend not to understand me. After all, though she has teen so—so wicked'—the poor lady stifled sniffs in a delicate cambric handkerchief—' alill lam her mother.'

* I suppose so'; (it was a grudging sort of concession),' but then, you see, I am her husbaad. I think you may rely upon my good behaviour.' ' And you will forgive her, and take her back? How good, how generous, She does not deserve it 1 I shall always say you are the noblest of men.' Then Hopecastle's patience came to an end

'Madam,'he Baid, and looked thunderouj, 'please remember that when you speak of Lady Hopacastle to me it must be with respect. As to your thanks, they are entiiely out of place; my relations with my wife cannot be a fit subject fortbe thanks or interference of anyone, You< force me to be very candid, and if you would permit me one suggestion,- it would be that you ignore stupid scandal un il you have it at first hand. I think we shall part better—friends,, if we part at once. Remember me to the vicar; I hope he is keeping better.' He walked with her down the long corlidor and through the hall, and brought himself at parting to effer his hand. Bat she would not Bee it. Mrs Carpenter was a disappointed woman; if she had succeeded in her grand marcoivre, she had ia course of it lost her daughter's esteem and love. Aad so far from her child's marriage bringing her Eearer the charmed circle, she lived in the mortification of knowing, and seeing others saw it, that Bhe was received ia her son-in-law house on sufferance. It is an unsatifactory business, this social mountaineering. (To be continued,