A Daughter of Midian.

Auckland Star, Issue 23, 28 January 1901, Page 6

A Daughter of Midian.

By JOHN K. LEYS. Author of " A Sore Temptation," " The Thumb Print," " The Broken Fetter," " In the Toils," " A Million of Money," etc., etc., etc

CHAPTER XXII,

SYBIL PLAYS THE SPY,

"You know, Sybil," said the elder Sister, "I didn't feel at all sure what sort of welcome you would give me after I had been so horrid to you at Scarton. It wasn't till I got close ' enough to you to see the expression I In your face after you recognised me that I had the courage to speak. Oh, how I have hated myself since for my rudeness, my coldness " j "Sidney, I won't let you say one i 'other word like that," interrupted Sybil, laying her hand on her sister's j lips. "No wonder you were indignant, with me, coming to confess that I was masquerading under your name, and j asking you to help me to carry out the fraud, at least by your silence. It was a little too much!" "No, no, Sybil, that had nothing to 'do with my feeling towards you. That I was only an excuse. My real feeling towards you was one of hatred. Do i you wonder why? Because in the eye of the law you are our parents daughter, and I am not my father's daughter at' all! I was born, you know, before it was discovered that the mariage between my father and my mother had been discovered to be invalid. Then—l must tell you the truth if you do not know it already— they were married over again, and in i the year following you were born. I have an old Bible that belonged to my father, with the entries all regularly made. But I was jealous of you, Sybil—so horribly, unnaturally jealous! So jealous that I hid the fact from you, and allowed you to think yourself illegitimate, like myself." "Stop, stop, Sidney! You are allowing yourself to get quite morbid about that unfortunate business. It was not our parents' fault that their marriage was invalid. No sensible person could possibly think that it is the slightest stain upon you in any way whatever. It was the sort of thing that might happen to anyone. I've heard of men pretending to be clergymen when they were not, even in this country. Take my advice, sis, and don't think any more about it." The only answer to this was a sigh. "Don't you think it is very strange that Mr. Mitchell should have given himself so much trouble about us?" asked Sybil after a pause. "He knew —our father; and there ;was no one else to look after us, after —after "

Sybil pressed her sister's hand in silence. It was the only time they ever referred, even distantly, to the manner of their father's death. "Do you think, Sid, you can have any real claim against him? Y 7ou know he offered to settle an allowance on you if yon would resign^ any claims you might have upon him." "Yes, he did. And Hko a fool I refused the offer. I have come here now to see whether he will renew it." "Oh, Sid, do you think that is wise? "I am certain it is. Think a moment. Suppose Mr Mitchell owed our father money, the debt would pass to you, not to me. He might have left me something by his will, 'out it is impossible for me to prove that he did make a will, or that he had anything to leave. I am helpless; and I should be a fool to refuse the offer of a comfortable income for the sake of retaining a shadowy right that is in all probabilitj'. worth nothing." "You may depend on it, Mr Mitchell does not think it worth nothing, or he would not offer yoi an annuity to surrender, it," said Sybil.

"That is what I told myself when he first made the proposal to me. But now I see that whether it is worth much or little I can never avail myself of it, so. I have made up my mind that a bird in the hand is worth any number in the bush."

"I doubt -whether I -would accept the toffer if he made it to me," said Sybil, "and therefore I hope it will not come into his head to make it; for if he did make it, and I refused it, I could scarcely stay on at the Castle, and I really don't know where else I could go. I wonder whether I should make a decent governess," she went on, after a pause. "I fancy not." "Don't!" cried Sidney, with, such energy that her sister laughed outright. "Be a cook, or a parlour-maid, or a housemaid, and you will be respected and "well paid. Be. a governess, and you will find that you are neither treated as well nor paid as well as the servants in the kitchen. They knowit too—which doesn't make it any the pleasanter for you in the schoolroom upstairs. In a school it. is different. You are part of a system, and you are not subject to the whims of on underbred ill-tempered woman, who thinks she can prove that she is a fine lady by showing that she can be insolent to a helpless dependent. Don't do it, Sybil, ■whatever you do. But if Mr Mitchell renews his offer of an annuity to me, why should we not live together?"

"Thank you a hundred times, Sid, but it will be time enough to talk of that when your income is settled on you. At present we are both alike — lonely, poor, and uncertain about the future. And yet I am happier than I have been for many a day, because I have got you to love me, Sid."

The two girls both started as the great bell that was attached to the chain at the front entrance to the Castle tolled loudly.

"Mr Mitchell has come back by the late train after all," said Sybil, risingl from her seat on the rug. "He so seldom comes by it in winter that I had quite given him up. Should you like >fto go and meet him in the hall, Sidney, or shall we wait and let him discover us here?"

"I think we had better stay where ■we are," said the elder sister, turning her eyes on the door.

In a very short time the door open-

Ed, and the laird bustled into, the room. "Where is the young leddie—where have you put her?" he said to the servant behind him.

"I am here, Mr Mitchell," said Sidney, advancing from the fireplace. "Oh, v'ou're there, are you? Well—-?"

The pause evidently meant—"What do you want here?" and Sidney Grant answered it at once.

"You remember a letter you wrote to me some time ago, offering to make me an annual allowance on certain conditions?"'

"Yes— 'and what of that? You refused my offer. Have you thought better of it?" "Yes."

"And T have thought better of it too," said the laird, with a chuckle.

Sidney swallowed something in her throat, and the soft hand that lay in Sybil's twitched convulsively, but she made no reply. And Mr Mitchell. without so much as another look in her direction, fell to work upon the cold pie and other eatables which, had been placed on the table. "What shall you do?" whispered Sybil to her sister. Sidney made no repl>, but she trembled all over. The fact was than relying on Mr Mitchell's old offer, and I sick to death of the monotony of ! school life, Sidney had thrown up her ! situation; so that the cool rejoinder of the laird that he also had changed : his mind was something like a sentence of death for her. "Let us go up to bed," whispered Sybil. "You will sleep with me tjnight, wont you?" "Please don't go upstairs yet, young leddies, said the laird, eyeing them suspiciously, though without changing the position of'his head as it hung over his plate. "I've got something to say to ye." # Of course the two girls kept tnen" places in the. chimney corner, whilst the master of the Castle west eg with I his supper. j Before he had finis"ned his meal a ! mesasge was brought to him saying that the factor was waiting to see him. The laird grunted, and went on with his snpper. Evidently he considered the factor a personage of greater consequence than either of his guests, for when he had finished supper he hastily rose from table and went to the library, forgetting, apparently, that he had asked Sybil and her sister not to go to bed till he had spoken to them. So the two girls remained where they were, while the silent butler removed the supper tray, and then took I a cellaret from the sideboard, and carried it out of the room. "That means that the conference may last all night," said Sybil. "I'm i going to bed." : " "Please stop a little longer, dear," pleaded Sidney. "llemcmber that 1 have no one to* look to but Mr Mitchell, and it would be a pity to offend him | on the very first night." ! Sybil was not so much afraid erf the I "dour" consequential little man who was master.at Inveroran as her. sister was, and she wanted to go to bed; but of course she could do nothing but carry out Sidney's wishes. They sat down together before, the dying, fire, ) a|idvagain their hands insensibly met. Miss Dalrymple had considerately ; left, ; th,e two sisters to themselves, and retired long since. The servants, too, had gone up to their rooms, and the great house, was as still as a tomb. •An hour went by, and Mr Mitchell did not return to the dining-room. He seemed to have forgotten that the two g-irls were, sitting up at his request. "I will go and tell Mr Mitchell that we are waiting for him," said Sybil, springing to her feet. 'I dare say, he has quite forgotten that he asked us not to go to bed till he had spoken to us; but it would be quite like him if he were to be sulky with us to-morrow, all the same, if we disobeyed him.— Wait here till I come back.",

Sybil's shortest way to the room where Mr Mitchell and the factor were sitting1 lay through the disused closet in which she had once before tried to hide herself when she was anxious to hear what was being said in the laird's room. It was with no intention of eavesdropping that she took that way now, but as soon as she opened the door of the closet she remembered that with a little trouble she could manage to overhear the conversation between the laird and his factor. For a few minutes she stood still, considering whether she would be justified in playing the spy. And she'caxne to the conclusion that there was not the same necessity, or the, same excuse, for playing the spy on Mr Mitchell that had existed on the former occasion. She had now established her identity, and it was no business of hers, she told herself, to pry into the affairs of the laird.

She decided, therefore, that she would simply knock at the door, and putting her head into the room wish Mr Mitchell good-night, and come away. But she forgot to tap at the door, for no sooner had she reached the inner door, which opeited into the laird's room, than she heard a name shouted out in a loud and angry voice —a name that made her start and her face turn pale—the name of her father.

What had these two men to say about him? Surely, whatever it might be, she had a right to hear it? So she opened the door very softly, held it open about half an inch, and bent her ear to listen. McPail was speaking.

"Don't you owe it all to me, you dirty scrub? What could you "have done without me? You never could have done the job without me? Grant could have eaten half a dozen of you!"

The reply was so low that the listening girl could not v catch it. MacPhail burst into a loud, mocking laugh. "You hadn't the nerve!" he cried. You'd have missed . What's that you say? Don't speak of it? Wha's wantin' to speak of it? But I'm not going without my fair share. If we had divided fair, or onything like fair, how comes it that you're the master and I'm the man? How comes it that you live i' the- castle, an' I bide i' the factor's lodge?"

"Becaurn you thre\^ away; your

chance when you had it, like a fool. I warned you not to part with the shares, and you preferred ready money. And yet, ten thousand pounds and a" post like yours is not to be despised, Duncan, and none kens that better than you. You're very well oft, and you're not such a fool as not to know it."

The answer to this was an indistinct grumbling, like the growling of a wild beast in a cage. Would they say nothing more about her father, Sybil wondered. If only she had happened to come a minute or two sooner! "And now, what are ye going to do wi' they twa young weemen?" demanded the factor.

"I've been thinking of that," said Mr. Mitchell, in his thin, hard tones. I'll offer the auld sister two pound or two pound ten n week to go to Italy —or some place far awa', an' bide there. I offered her three hundred a year to do the same thing tbe year before last, and the silly creature didna talc' it. So I can male' my am terms wi' her. After all, she has no claim on me."

"Alt' the young ane?" "Well, she's what I ca' a credit to the establishment. I'm no' in ony great hurry to part wi' her. She's bonny, and though she's a deep ane she can do me no harm. I have thought sometimes that the Honourable Ronald Keith took a fancy to her, when he was staying here for the shooting; and it would suit me very well if he wore to marry her. It would be a good thing for our family." "But she's no kith, or kin to you! exclaimed the factor, with a note of surprise in his voice. "No; but I'm her guardian, and it would doubtless tend to draw his lordship's family an' mine thegither. What i- ue are ye sniggerin' at there?" "Hoots, man, naethin'! Ye're juist clean awa' wi' your suspeecions. But I'm savin' this. Ye may keep that young \vumman here, but it'll be at yer am peril. Ye said yersel' that she was a deep ane, and she's proved "Never fash yer thumb aboot that, Duncan, ma man," said the laird. He had relapsed into the broad Scotch he had spoken in his youth, by which Sy- j bil knew he was pretty far gone m liquor. "The hiss has nae suspeecions —hoo could she hae ony? And here she'll bide as long as it pleases me. And noo I'm thinkin' it'll be about time ye were steppin' doon bye, Duncan. Yell juist hae ac mair gless, an' than yell gang." Sybil, in terror lest she should be caught playing the spy. drew gently away from the door, not even daring to close it. Dark as it was she made her way without any mishap through the adjoining room, and thence into the hall. Sidney, tired out with her long journey, had fallen fast asleep over the fire.' now a heap of white ashes with a red clow in the centre. "Come, sister,"' said Sybil, laying her hand on her head to wake her, but speaking under her breath. "Come, pud I will take you up to your room.' "Why, Sybil, how strangely you speak! What is the matter? Has anvthinq- happened?" "No And yet something has happened. I have learned that Mr. Mitchell and that wretch the factor have cause to be afraid of me." For those words of McPhail still echoed in her ears, "If you keep her here you keep her at. your peril!

(To be continued.)