A STORY OF GREAT POWER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 198, 19 August 1908, Page 3

A STORY OF GREAT POWER.

We request a perusal of the opening instalment of the extremely captivating story we are to begin in SATURDAY'S issue. It bears the expressive title of A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE." By SIDNEY WARWICK, Author of "In Name Only," "The Knave of Diamonds," "Leffert's Dilemma," "A Perilous Tryst," etc. The incidents are so vividly pourtrayed that a sense of reality pervades the reader. They clearly show how tragic events may naturally arise from trifling causes. An engaged couple differ upon an unimportant theme, then pride aud stubbornness aggravate the dispute until it becomes so serious that a rupture of the engagement is the result. Olive Kernham deeply regrets the quarrel, ami as her lover angrily strides away, she looks back, expecting that he will return. But stubbornness was ever dominant in the nature of Dennis Garth, and there was no relenting on his part. With aching heart Olive turns homeward, but ere she has gone many yards she becomes AN UNEXPECTED WITNESS of a tragedy. To protect the suspected man, not that she admires him, but with the sole desire to befriend his mother, then an almost hopeless invalid, by keeping from her the distressing intelligence that her son is accused of a crime, she consents to A CONSPIRACY OF SIXENCE, and becomes Ailwyn Trent's bride, impelled to do so by the knowledge that a wife cannot be legally required to give evidence against her husband. The bridal ceremony is hardly over ere Olive is prostrated with the appalling information that a network of suspicious circumstances has-enclouded the man she really loves, and that he is suspected of the murder. She begs her husband to step forward as a man of honour, and tel] the truth, regardless of his own safety. This he refueses to do. on various pretexts. The result is that she despises the coward whose wife she has unfortunately become. Various complications ensue, and the reader is constantly surprised and delighted with the drift of this really enthralling romance. The fust instalment will appear on SATURDAY, and be thereafter continued bi-weekly.