A WIFE FOR A DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 66, 18 March 1905, Page 14

A WIFE FOR A DAY.

I CHAPTER XLIII. THE DEAD ALIVE. ; The good-byes had been, said: the ; train was moving slowly out of the little country station. Madge looked " out. of the f-ar window and waved her i hand to Bob on the receding platform ' till a curve in the line liid him from 1 ber sight. Nearly three weeks had passed since . that day when she had tuld Bob .about i the discovery of Mrs Cartarot's guilty secret, which had altered the whole I course of her future. She thought over those weeks now a3 klic :-at fn. • the train that was carrying her to I New York. ! Since that day she had never again ; known the samn wild gladness that had 1 swept over ber on the night when Bob ! asked her to be his wife. Bob had not been quite, the same 1 since that day. He was as gentle, as '< thoughtful, as tender; only she missed ! something—something that that night ' of scented dusk and stars, when he 1 had taken her in his arms and called ■ her his prieess, had given. That ' night she had felt be was wholly hers. '■ But she had listened vainly for that note of wild, tumultous passion in his 5 voice again. Her woman's subtle in--1 stinet told her that at her coming his pulses no longer ibeat with that mad; 1 rapture she had stirred in him that ; I niffbt, aad the knowledge was torture 1 ! to* her. She was filled with a consuming jea- • lousy of Enid. She knew—she was a ' woman, and she knew—that his 5 thoughts had turned again to Enid with ■ something of the old feeling in his mll tense pity, in his anxiety as to what 1 had befallen her.

She and Bob were to be married soon, i She was going to New York to buy her • clothes for the wedding. He had giv- ; en no sign by word or by his manner that he repented having asked her to marry him. ' He loved her still, ; still wanted her to be his, ?. wife — she would not have allowed herself to think otherwise—only Bob was not quite the same. She no long- . or had the feeling that had thrilled her with ii mad exultation that night, that he was wholly hers: there was something she missed^—something that she sometimes felt his love would never know again. "When we are married I'll win him wholly back!"' she whispered, earnestly, to herself. "My love shall compel a devotion na deep, shall teach him to forget her/ How tedious the journey was! She was going to be in 2sew J'ork a wee-k —» week of exile! Would it. ever pass, that week before she came back Bob? Soon after her return they were to be quietly married in the little old church near Edgemere Towers, and then she would go to the cottage as his wife. She would never live, at Edgemere Towers, as once she had dreamed. The desire, too. was gone. Her home would be the home of his boyhood, that Bob loved, and that she had learned to love, too, for bis sake. She sat staring out of the window, while the express bore her swiftly on to New York. She reached the Grand Central Station at last. First of all, when she had given her belongings into the charge of a porter, she went to the telega ph office to send a telegram, as she had promised, to Bob, telling him of her safe arrival. It pleased her to think that he would be awaiting it eagerly. Then she took a cab and drove to the hotel where she was to stay. How bustling Xpw York looked after the quiet Borkshires! Paved streets, with their gay stores, dispirited her. 'I he sun had been shining when she left the eternal hills: here the skies wore! grey and leaden; she had left the sunshine behind her. Madge was glad wh<?n the cab turned into crowded Broadway. Sihe leaned forward, watching interestedly the crowds that thronged tie pavement. But as she stared out through i>he ope.v windows a change came over her face, with startling swiftness. A fry broke from her parted lips;.her face had paled to an ashy whiteness; the street and the moving crowd swam before her eyes aa she leaned back against the cushions of the cab. faint and dizzy from the horror that had suddenly leaped out from that living, shifting panorama, of the street. In the crowd she had seen the face of a man she had believed dead and beyond the power of bringing more sorrow into her life. It was the face of George Ames, her husband of a day! Tier husband Jiving! Madge leaned back faint and dizzy against the cushions of the «ab. her sen- j ses reeling under this unexppt-tcd. over- j ! whelming blow that fate had dealt her. j Her husband living, and therefore, that j contemplated marriage with Bob Annes- | leigh could never Oh. the thing was impossible—(his mad thins that she had imagined, that j would have shut the gates irrevocably ' on her happiness! The thing was im-1 possible! She had l»een mistaken, she I told herself, desperately: she must, have I Taron mistaken! (iporjre Ames ms dead! She pulled herself together and looked out of the window again. The cab was scarcely moving, owing to a block in the traffic; her feverish eyes searched the thronged pavement, but vainly: the man wlicsc face had so startled her was lost in the shifting crowd. "■£ was mistaken," she whispered to herself again. "Of course. 1 was mistaken! A chance resemblance to the man who is dead, flashing unexpectedly out of the crowd, startled mc for an instant, that was all—merely a chance resemblance, as 1 should have realized j if I had looked twice. How could it ' possibly have been George Ames?" Madge spoke vehemently, as Though there was even yet some lingering doubt i in her mind that she needed to dispel. She was white and agitated. The rememberance of that face that had suddenly leaped out from the. crowded street, with. it>s strange likeness to the dead maJi, lay liko a chill on her heart. What if it had been George Ames, not dead, after all, as they had believed? Madge put the thought from her. She would not admit, the possibility—for to admit it meant that she could never be Bob Annesleigh's wife. Of course.. George Ames was dead! Had not. she and Bob stood over him as he lay lifeless in that old house"; And then, too, within a few hours that house hadbeeu burned to the ground. Even if there had been the breath of life still in him. ouly by a. miracle could he have escaped from the, tire—by one chance in a thousand. But how like him the stranger in the crowd had b?en! That one glimpse had brought back all the old horror' of her marriage, followed by her sudden awakening to the realization of her husband's true character, and her flight, . aJI rounded off in o<ne day by a tragedy. Madge had dinner in her room at the quiet, hotel where she was staying; she j felt lonely, and had ri-o appetite. After dinner she wrote a letter to Bob- She began to tell him of the shock that her first hour in New York had brought her; but, she changed h<>r mind and tore up the sheet. This was her first love-letter to Bob; those foolish, groundless fears that had assailed her were out of place in a love-letter. She would go bade to the blessed hills before the end of the week if it were possible. Madge lold herself, only the buying of clothes was a thing not to be hurried, for she wanted Bob to ho. proud of his bride, although they w^re to be married in the quietest way. Besides, there was a <;ood deal of business to be transacted at the lawyer's. She had no friends in New York; in all her life she bad scarcely known an intimate friend of her own sex. Her mother had died when she was a child; her father's social ostracism had struck cruelly at her. debarred her from feminine society of her own class- Her father's friends had all been of one stamp - —professional gamblers. Though she had loved her father, as her passionate championship of him had shown, her memories of childhood had little of pleasure or happiness as she looked back. The one bright spot in it had been that , year of boy-and-girl friendship with Bob Annesleigh. But the future should compensate her—the future, -when she would be Bob's -wife. "I have a right to bo happy," she told herself, she looked back with a little shiver on the loneliness of her girlhood, overshadowed by her father's disgrace—"l have a right to bs happy! Even if I thought that Bob loyed Enid, I couldn't give him up now—all the happiness that is bound up with him! But he doesn't -love Enid. He lores me—me only!"" she whispered to herself, as though -with, a pas&i-onaie eag-

erness to kill those doubts that sometimes, in spite of herself, would creep into her mind. "'And we shall be happy together! I'll be such a good wife to y-ou, Bob! Only I hope—l hope I sha'n't dream to-night of the man whose face reminded mc of George Ames!" The next day Madge spent in Broadway and along Twenty-third-street, and among tho great stores. It would have been a simpler task, this buying of gowns and other wearing apparel, if she had only herself to please; but what was of much more importance to Madge was buying what Bob would like. She racked her memory for any remarks or hints of his from which she could gather what would be most likely to commend itself to his critical, masculine taste. . The day following, Madge called at the office of the lawyers of the Cartare-t estate. Messrs Goodeuough, Strait and Root, where she signed various formid-able-looking legal documents, with only the vaguest knowledge of what they meant. Then she asked Mr G-oodenough about Enid—if he could give her Enid's address. "I am sorry to say I can't, Miss Carla ret. Th« late Mrs Gartaret's adopted daughter changed her address without acquainting us of her new one. After Mrs Oartaret's death she came several times to the office, as you know, to make a sworn declaration as to her parentage, and so forth, and I must say that she approached the matter in a most proper spirit, for there is no doubt that but for her complaisance, had she elected to contest your claim, you might have had a great, deal of trouble in succeeding to the estate, Miss Cartaret," said the lawyer, in his dry, precise way. "Shortly after our assurance that we should not require to trouble her any further, she left the rooms where she and 'her mother had been staj-ing, without acquainting us of her subsequent movements. It was as though she wanted to cut herself off from all her old friends."' "I am sorry." said Madge. "I should have liked to know. 1 should have. liked to help her and her mother, if they would let inc." ■•1 am afraid that Miss Enid is a very —I won't say obstinate—'but—er—determined young lady," said Mr Goodeuongh. "Except for a small legacy or so, all Mrs Cartarefs personal property was bequeathed to Miss Enid. She, very foolishly, as I tAiink, has informed mc that- she has no intention of accepting it for her own use. However, when the affairs of the estate are settled, and the time comas for paying the legacies, I hope to induce her to reconsider her determination—especially as I am afraid that their, means are very slender. 1 understand that Mrs Webb has found some employment in the establishment of one of the Broadway firms—embroidery work, I believe—but, of course, it is very precarious. Besides, Mrs Cartarefs adopted daughter has be«n brought up so differently." -Mrs Cartarefs adopted daughter!" That, ha-d been Ihe line this shrewd old lawyer had'definitely taken, in his eagI erness that no public scandal should J attack tho name of the. family that he j and his father before him had served. He deliberately ignored all sugges- | tion of ;iny attempted fraud on the part of the late mistress of Edgemere Tower?. Enid was the daughter of a friend j —-« young jrirl whom Mrs Cartaret. being ! childless, had adopted in infancy: if I people had come to think of Miss Enid jas being Mrs Cartarefs own daughter —well, mista.kes were common in an imperfect world. M~hy. the will itself bore, him out, in which Mrs CartareL left her property il to Enid. w<ho has been more than a daughter to mc." The lawyer conveniently ignored the fact, liial in drawing up the will he had cavilled at the use of this phrase, and had wondered why Mrs Gartaret insisted upon it. in preference to the simpler "my daughter Enid."' Madge obtained Enid's previous address from the lawyer, and called there to make inquiries—a tall, shabby lodging house in Seventeenth-street., that had known better days. But the landlady could give her no information as to where her former lodgers had gone. She had been surprised, she said, that l.hey left no address, in case any letters came for them after they were gone: she. had been expecting Mrs Webb to call any day. she fm-tber informed Madge, for some things rha-t had been left behind when they went away. (To bp continued on Monday.)