Nerine's Second Choice

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 149, 29 June 1897, Page 4

Nerine's Second Choice

BY ADELAIDE STIRLING.

CHAPTER I

THE INTEELOPBB.

The January evening had darkened down early in fine shewen of rain and sleeb. A damp, cubbißg draught came in at the windew seat just where Nerine Lispenard knelt—where she hai knelt ia spite of ib for the pasb twenty minuteß, her face pressed against the cold window pane.

Before her the garden lay dark, wintry, sodden ; just dowa by tho gate were dimly to ba seen through the sleet the lamps of a email broughman, waiting there as ib had waited, Nerine thaughb, for centuries. As she made this reflection far the tenth tine the lights, with a jerk and a plunge, vanished. .... There was nothing new to see but the eloem, yet tha girl still stared uncertainly out through the glass, all blurred by her breath. Had thase lamps really gone—gone to the stabion—or had they merely been senb back bo tha sbable ? The door of the room behind her opened quickly, and bhere came in two girls, one as tall as Nerine herself, the other a tiny creature, but both laughing like two elves. . • Gone 1 gone ! gone 1 cried the foremost. 'Bat, oh, my hoard was in my

mouth.' ' He passed me on the vary doorstep. The libble girl was a mere bundle of wraps and furs as she came into the firelight. ' If the sleet bad nob been driving into bis aapnst countenance be must have seen me.' ♦No I 1 cried Nerine, joyfully. She leaped forward and made a dive ab the speaker. • You dear Kit. hew did you ever get: here ?' •I walked,' said Miss Belton, sedately. * From the station, that is. Something told me us migbb have missed the train, so that 1 did nob engage tha wheels of a chariot. My boxes repose in the waibingreom in consequence.' ' Ha missed two trains,' observed the tall girl, who was Miss Lispoßard the elder, ss she sat down en the heart rug and spread cut two chilled hands to the fire. 'And he was on the poinb of countermanding the carriage this last time till I thought despair would have killed me.' There was no note of laughter in her voice : her tragic gesture was perfectly serioHS and equally serious her sister's response. ■ Thank Heaven ! For one biassed month we are rid of him.' • Is he any—worße—the* ?' inquired Miss Belton, taking effher outer garment* and Casting them on the floor.

Neriae looked at her.

• Werie 1 Nob even ho could be worse and remain human. My dearest Kit, this is a frightful place yon have come to ; you will hardly bar* the comforts of life.' Stooping over her sister, ehe stirred the fire into a- blaze fchat lighted up ths bare old room. ' You shall hear the worst,1 sho said. ' Never say that we did not prepare you for three weeks of bread and scrape.' Agatha Lispenard, Nerine's elder by five minutes, looked up judicially. 'Don't frighten her,1 she said. 'She will go homo to-morrow if she thinks we are as poor as all that.' Kitty) Belton put a quick band on Agatha's shoulder. ' Agatha,' she cried, ' you forgeb. You saidI—reproachfull1—reproachfully—'that if I came we weald do like men who keep bachelor's hall, pay share and share alike.' • I may have said it'—dryly—'bub J didn't mean it. Yea know, Kit, ttlab Nerine and I have always enough for you.' 'Very well.' Miss Belton got up and picked her web bat off the fleor. ' Bub if I am nob to share expenses 1 am going to catch the six-thirty train back to Belton.'

■ You will catch nothing like it!' er claimed Nerine.

•Unless Agatha keep* her promise,' pinning on her hat. ' 1 mean it. I am angry—furious !' •Oh, pay it All, if you like I 1 Agatha said, crossly, 'so long as you stay, We can't spend a fortune even with the most riotom living. Only think,1 she went «n, her loiely face flashing ; ' he has dismissed all the servants bub the kitchen maid, and i be horses are to go onk for exercise only, no matter how much we want them. Are you prepared, Kit, to make your own bod jf a morning?' ■ And to He on it ab night,' said Kit. discarding her hat once more. 'la that all he's dose? I tboHgh he had probably left out just so much in groceries and provisions, and had sent written orders to the grocer aad butcher rogulating your allowances' Agatha looked ab Nerine m curious silence. Kit's jest, for some reaaan, fell flat. There waa a brief silence, and then Kate asked : •Now, girlß—both of you—where do you think he's gone?' 1 Kamtchatka 1' said Nerine, idly wondering if she ought not to go and assist Jane with the evening meal. •He went,' ' said Agatha, deliberately, • to Monte Carlo.' 'Monte Carlo?' cried Nerine. 'Mr Mayne went to ' 1 Monte Carlo,' with a nod of her black bead. • How do I know ? He gave Jones an address to which his letters were to be forwarded, and Jones lost the card. I •uspecb he would have been severely reproved by Mr Mayae, for I met him standing outside the door afraid to knock. He could have let aie walk on him when I produced the precious card.' • You gave ib to him ? How could you ? The man is a reptile/ 1 He is better than his master, even «o. Fancy the old hypocrite, who says, " Cards and dancing are the vices of the century," ' and she imitated the clear-cut enunciation of a familiar voice. 'He would have to get to heaven as best ha migbb if his beloved Plymouth Brethren knew where be was going.' ' I hope he'll gamble away all his money, Nerine said, earnestly. Had not all that money been ground oufe of her and hera, ■aved off their young backs, out of their hungry mouths' for this past ten years? Ever since their mobher had died and left fcheaa unreservedly to the tender stepfatherly care of Clarence Mayne. • I wonder,' said Kitty Belton, ' how your mother came to marry him.' ' Poor little mother 1' Agatha said. ' She was only twenty-seven when she disd, and ■be had lived such a pleasant, easy life all her days that she never thought there was any other sort possible.' •Did she leave him everything?' asked Kit, more aa a sign of sympathy than anything else, for she knew the Lispenard tragicomedy by heart.

'Only till we are twenty-one,' cried both sisbers in a breath. * Then horses, income— everything is eura !'

Nerine stared at the fire with an uaploasant look in her grey eyes. • And than,' she remarked slowly, ' there will bo short work of Clarence Mayne. Pouf! He will go like thab putf of smoke there will when the tire begins to blaze.' 'There aro really only ten months more,' said Agatha, briskly. 'We are twenty bow, Kit!'

' Old Maytie has made the tnoßt of the last ten years,' Nerine went on, sombrely.' He has aaved and pinched and scraped. Kib, you should see our garments. Bub when you do,' smiling sadly, ' I don'b believe you wiil care to walk out with us.'

• Bab he can't save much on his own account,' said Rib. 'He has two horseß, and he spares no expanse at the club.' 'He has two horses,' Agatha assented, 1 but he can't help that. There was seme clause in the will about that. He would infinitely prefer two donkeys," laughing. ' Ho can't ride. And when he drives in the brougham he sibs always with one hand on tho door. *

1 Don't talk aboub him !' Nerino cried. •Thoro are only ten months more of his regime, and for one monfch of that ho will ba away. Kit, how did you pet your people to let you ceme te us V With a deal of trouble, Miai Bolfcon mighb havo said truthfully. Clarence Mayne's heuae was not in the best of odour with the world, nor were Agatha and Nerino themselvoß precisely regarded with approval. Perhaps no obo ever understands exactly why other people are just what they are. Sir William and Lady Belton thought that their cousin's children might havo managed better, been bolder, braver than they were. Surely they need not have shut themselves up as they did, till their father's old friends, beyond a yearly call, left unreturned for months, knew nothing of them. And when they were invited to Belton they need not always have sent a polite refusal. Ib was with a mule's obstinacy that Kit did obtain permission to go and itay with coueiws whoae conduct was chiefly remarkable for eccentricity. But coma ehe had, and she passed ever Nerine's question skilfully. 'Oh, I wanted to come,' was all she said. ' No wonder the girls had refused to go to Belton at Christmas,' she thought as the fire blazed np and she saw the wefnlly shabby dressaa they were. ' Mamma csuld never bo made to understand that a mau who called himself a gentleman ceuld refuse bia siepdaughcers gowns to wear,'

Clarence Mayne's cleverness waa a complete concealment of are. He was an interloper, all but an adventurer, when he married Mrs Lispenard. But on those rare occasions when be bad encountered the hostile Lispenard connections the charm of his perfect manners had made them ferget those undeniable facts. Just as ths rector of St. Jude's, when he found that on the death of Mrs Mayne church subscriptions would cease, could cay nothing to Mr Mnyne'a discredit when that gentleman confessed to him that, belonging as he did to the »trictoßt division of the Plymouth Brethren, his conscience could not allow of his assisting ia the smallest degree in tho work of the Established Church.

As for bhe business of Maurice Liapenard, doubtless* Mr Mayne was to be blamed. The boy, who should in tike natural course of events have gone bo Eton and Oxford, had gone, in simple fact, nowhere beyond the scanty learning instilled by his sisters and picked up by his reading ; ho knew no more than any ploughboy. Bub Maurice must have had low tastes and little regard for learning ; peihaps, aa Mr Mayne delicately implied, he had been urged in vain to embark on the ordinary course of education, but had gone his own way, which ha had ended in geing to Liverpool to learn to be a tnecanical engineer. A Liapenard in a leather apron, toiling in a grimy, oily workshop, with hands such aa the Bsltoni had never imagined ceuld belong to one of good birth. Hand* black, rough, ingrained with dust and oil; but in very truth capable hands, which went well with Maurice Liepeuard's acute, inventive brain.

Only the bey's sisters knew exactly how he had lowered his pride to entreat his stepfather for the education which was hia right. Only tbey knew tho slighting, courtly wave of the band with which Clarence Mayne had dismissed those appeals as one silences an importunate, spoiled child. Only they knew that Maurice had gone off to Liverpoel to work as an ordinary apprentice becauio he had mo other way of entering any occupation ab all, and dared nob live for two years more in bhe same house with Clarence Mayne.

Nerine breathed mere freely since Maui ice was gone.

Lispenard House was no place for a lad, get as it was in a growing town, an island with its huge walled garden in the midst of populous atreoba. It had ence been a country retreat with a park, of which there was nothing left new bub the enormous garden, in tho midst of which the old house stood. Bnt the house and garden were ef great value, as Clarence Mayne well knew when he paid court to John Lispanard'a widow, and it was nob bill he wan safely married to her that he discovered hew really immovably bhe property wai tied up. Mrs Mayne knew nothing of such things and cared te»s. She waa a Canadian girl, whom John Lispenard had married during that wild, adventurous life of his in the Now World. He was an only son and an orphan, with bub one blood relation in bhe world, the Lady Belton, who was Kit's m«ther. He had lefb England when he came of age and for the rest of his life was virtually losb. All Lady Belton ever heard of him were the presents which mow and then reached her from various oub of-the-way places; a letter or two telling of his marriage and enclosing a photograph ef his wife, and then afoer an interval of some years a letter from his disconsolate widow, mentioning bis death in a mining accident in Nova Scobia, aa though Lady Belton already knew all aboub it. The poiab of the letter was in the postscript of throe pages. She was going to be married to Mr Clarence Mayne, and they and bhe three dear children, who would now have a second father, were coming to England to live ab Lispenard Hoaeo, which the writer had never yeb seen. Would Lady Belton got them respectable maids who would be ready to come bo them »b soon as they arrived ? Arrive they did in due course. Mrs Mayne as tall, handsome and unpractical as when John Lispenard had married her ; her new husband inexpressibly unobjectionable, with manners which might have been acquired ab the courb of old France ; small and clear cub as bo features, with blue eyes which had too cold and direcb a gaze for most people to meet. The three children were unmistakable Lispenards, apparently aboub the agei of five and four. Lady Belton khoughb bhom wonderfully well grown for their age when, ab Mrs Mayne's sudden death aboub a year after her arrival ia England, Mr Mayne told her they were bub four and three, bub, then, both their parents had been very tall and robust. Mrs Mayne en her arrival in England made that will which was s» soon to be needed. As the lawyer discussed tbe matter with her she discovered how very little she had be leave.

Lispenard House and Lispenard money were all strictly entailed. She left Clarence Mayne hia income until the two elder childrea of her firafc husband should be of age ; then it had to go to the male heir in the direeto line, nob from any will of John Lispenard, but by that of his father. When Maurice was old enough to understand his position he vowed to hitnnelf that there should be share and share alike between himself and his twin sisters.

They should have as much right in Liapenard House as he, aad as much mosey made over bo them. If the third was nob eneugh to enable him bo live in his father's house as his fabher'a son should, he would have a profession and by ib earn a sufficient income. Kib was bhe boy's only confidanb, and she veered between admiration and disgusb ab his purpose like a weathercock, to which her father's aad mebher's worldly-wise opinions and her affection for Agatha and ]Neriae played north and south winds. She had come across her cousins about two years ago whilo staying with some people in bho neighbourhood, and had been their fast friend ever since. • Girls,' cried Kit, shaking off the thoughtful silence which bad fallen upon the three in the big room where the fire played fitfully from bare fleor and scant famibure te vaulted ceiling, ' how much money have you ? I mean whab is the exacb amount of your present funds ?' Agatha laughed where she still Bab on the hearth rug, her loag white hands clasped round the knees of her shabby dress. • Funds, my dear ! Call them riches,' she cried. 'We have really, truly and absolutely, besides the three sovereigns doled out for our month's support by our beloved stepfather, fifteen pounds.' 'Where did you get it?' Kit asked, bluntly, though it was not a particularly large sum to her. 'We made ib. 1 Nerine said. Whab pretty bootß kib had on, and ahe would burn them in a minute. ' Kib, your boote are touching the grate !' warningly. •Of caurse ! I'm drying them,' as the triumphs of tho shoemaker's art hissed loudly on the hot bars, • Tell me about bhe money.' 1 We have a friend,' said Agatha mysterioußly, ' and be gave unto u» mosey for empty words.' • Nonsense !' Nerine's cheek turned red. • You know we never saw him, aor he us. Kib, wo saw an adverbisemenb in the Piccadilly Budget for Bhort storiea and we wrote two ' | ' And gob eight guineas apiece for them! Agatha broke in, triumphantly. 'We spent a pound on some things we wanted, and we've iffceen to maintain ub during the next three weeks. How,' with a long sigh of pleasure, 'shall we ever do it ?' In Kit's pocket were two ton-pound notes, nob counting loose gold and silver. Lady Belton had said she was to bo suro to buy Agatha and Nerine some trifling present, furs or anything they cared about having. And her money burned in her pocket. Bub she would wait bill she knew whab they wanted.

She yawned involuatarily with weariness and Nerine saw it.

' Agatha, U is half-past six and we quite forgot in getting the old man off that Kit had had no tea !'

She stooped to tho wide hearth, whore the grate had been an after thought ot economical Mr Mayne'e, and lighted a candle, whose feeble flame brightened Blowly and shone on the two Liapenard heads, black and smooth an silk, and on the rioting, curled head of little Kit, like • tangled Sobs of gold. Kit was pale. She had nob, tenderly cultured flower though Bhe waß, the strength of the Lispenards, who had grown up like weeds. And she had eaten nothing since morning.

' Take hor upstairs, Agatha, and give her a pair of my shoes,' Nerine said. 'And we'll have tea at once, bo don't be long. The fatted calf'—laughing—' ia only a chicken, and cold !'

( To be Continued Daily.)