THE ANGEL OF HIS LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 197, 18 August 1906, Page 15

THE ANGEL OF HIS LIFE.

By WINTHROP B. HARLAND,

Author of " The Colonels Enemy" " Lady Elgin's Secret] M The Elder Son" "A Harvest of Shame" " Lord Ashton's Heir" etc.

[ fco expect an answer so soon? You ] scarcely knew me—certainly you did 'not i 'enow my lore—and I expected you to lecide a vital question in a few hours. Yon must have seen the folly, the un- ; reasonableness of such a request, as dearly as I myself did." *" Then, if you do not want my answer, ■ [ may go." " No! I will not have your answer, because to take it now would be unjust to both. But—do not go." " Why should I stay V "Because, in the years that may be before mc, I would" have some bright : hours to look back on. Madge, remain '■ with me—just one hour: let mc speak' to you; let mc forget, if you cannot. tliat Victor Bcresford exists." Madge wavered: so, the writer thinks, would one older and wiser than she, with Qeorge Pigottt"3 handsome eyes Sxed an hers with a sad. pathetic air; the lids drooped over tnem lazily ag a rule, so that they were all the more effective when he chose to turn them on full—the orbs, not the lids. The woman who hesitates is lost. Madge sat down on the rock, feeling very qnilty and mean, and Mr. Pigott stretched himself on the sand beside her. Blue and calm was the transparent sky. meeting the glorified sea in the shoreless distance; little ripples of white foam and golden water kissed the edge of the land, the hem of earth's garment. " Why do you look so grave and sombre?" he asked, pulling one of Flip's ears. '" Because I ought not to be here." " Why net ? There is no harm in it. You surely do not consider yourself bound by that foolish engagement —by a promise given before you could know"all that it meant. Listen. Do you believe that to swear to love and honour a. man to whom you were indifferent would be a sin? That is what your engagement means., what it will end in. if you are weak. You will swear to love Victor Beresford; you will be bound to Mm, not for a year, but for your whole life —till death comes. Does the prospect please you?" Her great brown eyes darkened with tears: but she answered nothing. " Why, in Heaven's name, my poor little girl, don't you say to your cousin that you have made a mistake? Tell him the honest truth, and ask him to set ' you free." j " They would all despise mc," said Madge. '■ Would they? Who despises Miss ' Biooke?" , I " X~o one living, I think," returned the • girl warmly. " You are right. And yet she broke her engagement. She did. ; she had the honesty to tell the man to whom' she was engaged that she did not cafe for him, and he thinks all the more of her for it. So do L She is the ideal of womanhood." ■ Madge was silent; that Thyra hacl done this surprised her; and George, like, a wise man, # left her to ponder the thought he had suggested, and lay rolling pebbles down the sand. " I should have thought ThyTa more likely to remain true to her promise, , ' -aid lladge, at length. •' Yes, an ordinary woman would have spoiled two lives for a scruple, no doubt: but she is made of nobler stuff Why, if you would but think what marriage means, that it a bond nothing can break, you could not rush into it with a man for whom you did not can?. I'm no saint, no Puritan: but I woiildn't mock Heaven by a marriage without affection." And he again permitted her to digest this remark, and take it into her troubled soul. Marry Victor? That was passing into the impossible, and ypt how could she Tround him by telling him so? What would her uncle say, and Annie, and Alfred? She sighed with weary irnpatiencp over the problem slie could not solve, the question she could not answer. " Do you know what I am thinking of?" asked George, at length; " of a poem I read lately: " Oh! Sft ns dotrn toc:eth«r In some place. Where not a voice can Imiak our heaven o£ bUss, Whpre only rorks an<i I can see her facp, SofLenins beneath the niurvel of thy grace: When? not a. foot onr vanished can track. The Koidffln age—the golden age come back!' " He lot his voice sink almost to a whi.-sper as he finished the quotation, and then went on: " Ah. Madge. Madge, I never believed in that until I saw you! Don't turn away like that; it does you no harm to hear my words; they are true enough. Heaven kiiow3, and, for all you care, I might utter them to that rock." '" Xo: I am sorry, very sorry. , ' "But why? Don't be sorry because I love you, for it is the one thing that gives ma gladness." "Oh, if Victor knew this; if they knew at home! I must go back/ said Madge, rising in sudden compunction; "I must

CHAPTER NIL "1 . HAYING WITH FIRE. _ladge went home with feelings impos-j-jje to define —though uppermost was _ sense of humiliation so keen as to be almost pain. To-day's experience seemgd to have stupefied her. There was pnlv one point, indeed, on wliich she was perfectly clear —that she did not love Victor; and the conviction had been in ier mind before. The engagement dated from her sixteenth year—an age not re- i jnaxkable for its wisdom; and since I then her mind had developed, though it j jpis vet in its infancy, so to speak, and | scarcely mora decided. One's opinions I at nineteen and at 25 are very different; ] in the progress from sixteen to nineteen i _l_dge had discovered that her childish j fanev for her handsome cousin had gone, | thoiiirh s he had. never told him —partly i throush dread of 'wounding him, partly 1 thxoush dread of his father, and. indeed, '• a ueneral lack of moral courage; so she 1 iad gone on acting her part. The case is j _v no means unique either in fiction or ! __ life. then the young heart, cast adrift, had fastened itself ou Alfred Beresford, for want of another—clinging to that rock with tae tenacity of a limpet, and thrilling at the mere memory of some "brief caress cradled in forjr-:tfulness" he might have bestowed on her by right of cousinship. ! And now came George Pigott, of the •world worldly, but of men manly, she thought. Love had Dever soared to him; she had been more awed by him, mora dazzled by his brilliance, than aught else; a coin of other realms than these, to her mind. "Was he better than Alfred. He was decidedly more clever; finer than even Lord Ralston'" Poor Victor she did not bring into ihe comparison at all. She was not by any means in love with Piirott. but she was afraid of him, and he had set her wondering whether, if her heart asserted itself, and the bonds of' engagement broken, she could care for him. And what was she to say to him tr> morrovr? Was it not better to give love where it was reciprocated *,han to -waste it on one who was quite indifferent? Was it not better to sive heart for heart? Decidedly. Yet she had not done so to "Tic-tor. "I do not love Victor."' she said; "but if .Alfred did not exist, 1 might have cared for the other." She went home and to her room direct; that her red eyes might not provoke inquiry: and in truth her head ar-hed so, and her silly heart was so sick and torn, that she was glad to get into bed, and lay her hot. feverish cheeks on the cold pillow, and weep futile tears, longing *ainly for aid and counsel. Poor little Madge, iv the garden of ♦,-hose soul were so many weeds which might have been trained into blossoms,, the narrow, cold rigidity of Annie Beresford's piety was a poor substitute for mother-love and mother-care. Life to her was a "muddle." a confusion, and it had never seemed worth any one's while to smooth, the tarried web for "hei*. She fell asleep, and when she awoke the room was in darkness. It was night. Someone had just stolen from the chamber, and. raising her eyes, she saw ThyTa in the doorway. She carried a candle, and its light fell on her face, noble in its pure and lofty womanhood. In the little circle of light she stood Eerene and beautiful to those who chose to see the revelation a good woman makes. The parable of the prudent virgins came into tho mind of the watcher, then the door closed. There was darkness and solitude, xnu running tears. When Madge came down to breakfast in the mornin_; she expected sympathy and condolence; but she found, to her cfemav. that the general impression was that she had _or.c to bed in a fit of the sulks. After a long lecture from Annie, and the salutation of '•"cross-pat.-h" from Fred, and the information from Tom that they were ;roin_- to advertise her temper as "lost, stolen, or -trayed. she went into the breakfast-room, to find her uncle wearing an expression of solemnity, such as he kept for '-'r.ndays and family prayers; w.iile Alfred looked at her with quiet displeasure. ••Indeed, Alf. my head did ache." she said to him humbly, finding him alone in the garden ai«.er the breakfast had teen toiled through. "It is only of late that you have been so. disagreeable," he returned, rather coldly. "I hope. Madgie. that you won't let the headache become chronic, for your own sake, if for no one else's." "You mean —you think —' "I think you "were very cross; that is the truth. Madge. Possibly. I am mistaken; but, all the same, 1 think it." And. having said so much, he resumed his cigar, picked up his paper, and let the 3ubjeet drop. Madge went in search of ThyTa, only to find her helping Miss Beresford with some work tor the Dorcas Society, with Agnes as attache, and the trio were laughim. over some incident' of yesterdays drive: they didn't want her—she Tvas in the way—one too many —a super-

fluitv—an encumbrance. j If MIBS Brooke had spoken to Alfred j he would have kept her there talking , and forgotten his paper; it didn't matter how Sludge was treated. In this mourn- J ful wav she got through the morning, j and in"this frame of mind prepared to keep her promise to George Pigott. She had an odd consolation in the thought | that if any of her persecutors knew her ' intention." they woul«i be angry, and would stop it." It was a righteous retribution for their indifference. Flip and Flop, two of the dogs, were ■ at her heels as she sallied forth; it was an old custom in the house to take the dogs for a bath, so that no one-thought of commenting on her departure any more than on dinner or supper. She walked slowly; once-, indeed, she "Was inclined to turn back, and the confusion of her mind was painful. Everyone can set out of a difficulty but the . person who happens to he placed in it, and she realised that she was tangling herself more and more, without having the most remote idea what to do that infusion might be less confounded, '<■. ■-:., George was first at the place of tryst, and on the alert; he advanced to meet her bareheaded. "'You really did come?* 5 he exclaimed. "Did you think T would not?" _ ."It is a great deal more than I de- . jstve, after frightening you as I did yes- • terday. But my self-command went _, when I saw you. and I could not repress o*y words. What right had Ito ask or

go. Mr. Piggott.'" "As you please; I am the last man to detain you against your will,'*" he replied", rising, too, and shading his eyes to gaze at the distant yacht. "Some day fate may be kind, and let mc see your pretty face again." '"Are you going away?" "No; but if I said meet mc here again, I know what answer you would give mc; and even a man in love may have pride." They walked along the shore some distance without speaking; then he asked, in a calm, conventional way, about her relatives. "They are well, thank you." . "Perhaps you will give my kind remembrances." "But will you not call at the house?'" said Madge, in surprise. "To tell you the truth I don't particularly care, but as you ask mc I will."' he answered, with a fine stroke of diplomacy. Madge bit her lip; unquestionably she had asked him, though without meaning to do so. When she looked back, he was fastening in his coat a rose that had fallen from her neck; but, meeting her eyes, he drew it out and pressed it to his lips. A wave of colour spread itself over the girl's face, and she turned hurriedly away, wishing she had not looked back. She walked home, dwelling, on his words, to the exclusion of Victor and even of Alfred —being forbidden fruit they were all the sweeter, and in the stolen meeting was a dangerous charm.

Entering the house was coming intc j the—very—rommonplace - from the transcendental. Miss Beresf ord sat working into flannel that mysterious pattern for some inscrutable reason called herring- | bone—that, I think, is the name given. Agnes was as solemnly doing the same, I and the squire slumbered peacefully under his handkerchief; even Prince Alfred seemed but an "every-day young man." as he sat reading the commercial column of the "Rc-xmere Courier* —all so different from the shore and the great sea with its soft voice-To-morrow the reign of terror would begin, for the tutor was goingyaway for his holidays, and the boys would be let loose for theirs, to yell, and shout, and tease, and play tricks. i <To be continued dally.)