HEARTS AFIRE

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 63, 14 March 1924, Page 12

HEARTS AFIRE

By MAY CHRISTIE.

WHO'S WHO IN THE STORY. rRUDKNCE TAGE, a charming country girl, has fallen in love with BEUT TItAYMOrtE. a fascinating philanderer, whom a chance meeting brings Into her quiet life. JANET MERCER, Prudence's dearest friend, an older woman, plain but clever, is masseuse to the delicate- child of MRS. VANSITTART, a pleasure-loving, woman-of-the-worl.l, owner of Winston Towers, a beautiful summer home. She invites Prudence to a ball at tbe Towers. Prudence accepts, and finding herself a wallflower, neglected by Traymore, who has professed to love her, slips a way Into the darkness. VIRGINIA DALE. Mrs. Vansittarts ward, is a blase beauty, who counts Tiayraore among her many swaius. She is the belle of tbe ball, but she Is disappointed not to find among her many admirers. PETER ARMSTRONG, a brilliant young inventor, clever and ambitious. He meets Prudence In her headlong flight from the nallroom, and after confessing that his love has proved false, from this Prudence deduces that be is lv love with Vlrgiua. he persuades the girl to return to tbe dance with him. Prudence creates a sensation by re-appear-ing at the ball with Teter, who is something, of a social .'-lion." Prudence's popularity is greater even than Virginia's, and Traymore Is once again the ardent lover. Traymore again promises to call at I'rudence's home, hut at the appointed time Prudence is astounded to rind Virginia on tbe steps of her home. Virginia has_called on Prudence to ascertain Just how far things have gone between Peter and the young "dairymaid." CHAPTER XXIV. Rivals. Virginia's visit was an absolute "fiasco" where Prudence and her mother were concerned. Prudence had seldom known euch utter discomfort as she underwent in having to sit opposite her lover and her rival, and —herself feeling miserably "out of things"—listen to talk in which she had no share. Worse still. Miss Virginia, with the baiting instinct given full play, deliberately showed up the girl's lack of knowledge of the world, her lack of travel, and her dearth of those accomplishments essential to a debutante. ''So you didn't go to a fashionable school, my dear! But what a pity!" Virginia's eyes widened with an assumed concern. Then turning to the girl's mother: —"but it isn't too late yet " "We couldn't afford it. Besides it would only unsettle Prudence," came the honest answer. "Unsettle? Why, it would be the other way around!" Here the tormentor smiled archly. "She'd 'settle' herself much better in life if she met the right class of girl. It would give her the entree, as it were. .■. ." "I'm quite happy," rrudence in desperation gasped, her words belied by her distressed young face. "I made such wonderful friends when I was at my finishing-school, up the Hudson," Virginia rambled on, with apparent artlessness. "Had the time of my young life ." "That must have been many years ago," cut in Mrs. Page, feeling rather as a tigeress does whose cub is being attacked. "It's different with -Prudence. She's only ninteen, and has lots of time to finish her education in the way we'd like it to be completed. Judging by what the finishing-schools and ladies' seminaries turn out though it wouldn't be there we'd send her." "One for you, Jinny!" Bert Traymore roared with laughter. Virginia could have clawed him. She could have clawed everyone in the room at that moment. Reference to the passing years was something that her vanity could not endure^ Besides, she scarcely looked much older than the Page chit. And she was twice as pretty, and ten times better dressed. But of course this woman was trying to grab Bert Traymore for her silly little daughter! And she resented Virginia's presence as a rival to that scheme. (She would have been considerably surprised had she known that Mrs. Page already was praying in her heart that Prudence's love might be deflected from this man!) Jinny unsheathed her claws again, and with a dazzling smile remarked: — "I suppose if you did send l.er away from home, it would be to one of tho.se business colleges where girls go who have to earn their living. . . . typing and shorthand and book-keeping, and that sort of thing. . . ." Bert Traymore intervened with a request to be allowed to smoke. Jinny was playing it a bit low down, lie thought, but of course she did show up the poverty of tiie land. And Prudence's mother was really rather "bourgeois", in that odd gown, and that plain spoken manner. Gad! he couldn't quite see himself in the role of son-in-law, though Prudence was a darling. Such an ominous silence had fallen on the little party that he felt it behoved him to say something. "Are you interested in motoring?" He turned politely to his hostess. "I was looking at new cars to-day, and trying to make up my mind which make I'd purchase." Virginia giggled gibingly. "You'd better settle your bridge-debt first with Mrs. Yansittart." Then she, too, turned to Prudence's mother. "This hoy has the worst luck at cards, but he simply won't leave them alone! It's in the blood, I s'posc. How much did you lose at poker, day before yesterday Bert? Fifty . . . . a hundred dollars?" Prudence's heart contracted painfully. Virginia was deliberately damning her lover in her mother's eyes. The girl knew what high standards that loving heart set up for any suitor who might approach, Mother never would forgive Bert, if he gambled! But he'd deny it, wouldn't he? Virginia was onTv trying to make mischief. He spoke, coolly, nonchalantly. "Yes, I do have rather rotten luck, but you needn't keep reminding mc of it, Jinny." "But it has its compensations," she flung back at him with an arch glance, "Unlucky at cards, lucky in love!" "I don't see the force of that," com- , mented llrs. Page, with a cryptic glance : at Traymore. j "Why?" Virginia couldn't leave bad ' alone, but wanted to make it worse. ; "A husband who gambled wouldn't I bring much happiness to his home." Prudence's motheF spoke with a brave conviction.

Virginia's laugh rang out. "But that wouldn't apply to Bert, as he isn't a marrying man at all!" She looked triumphantly, impudently, from face to face. Old Mrs. Page with set lips .... Prudence flushed with humiliation and embarrassment . . . . The young fellow himself looking awkward, and as though he were long ing for a favourable moment in which to clear out. Then she added breezily:— "And who can blame the men wanting to dodge the matrimonial noose? Ncne of them have any money, and unless the girl provides it, there's mighty little chance for a penniless maid, these days'." Bert muttered something half inaudible about it's being mighty hard on a fellow who'd like to marry, but the words echoed emptily, and with no conviction, on the ears of Prudence's mother, and indeed also with the girl herself. Bert—her Bert—he was siding with the enemy—if not openly, then tacitly She could have wept in grief and disappointment. She could hardly contain herself another moment, but must make some quick excuse to leave the room. "I'll get some fresh tea. What you have now is cold." She had lifted Bert's still half-filled cup and carried it to the door, when Virginia cried out bantering: — "But you musn't spoil the men, Miss Prudence! They don't ever appreciate it! They—" Out in the passage a big, genial voice sounded unexpectedly, with a hea,rty: . "Here's one man who appreciates anything Miss Prudence might be induced to do for him!"—and Teter Armstrong walked into the room! CHAPTER XXV. A Scrap of Paper. Peter Armstrong seemed to bring with him the fresh, genial breezes of a wider, kinder world. Instantly, for Prudence and her mother, the atmosphere of the Green Gables "best parlour" changed, as though by magic. "Exactly as if we'd been stifling, and then someone had flung all the windows wide open," Mrs. Page afterwards explained Peter's timely arrival. She had taken an instant fancy to the young inventor. "He looks you straight in the eye. And he talked to mc for nearly iifte'en minutes about his mother. Any man who is fond of his mother has "plenty of good in him." That had been her verdict. As for Prudence, she was only human and young Armstrong's words as he entered the room had been balm on wounds for her. One man who "appreciated" everything she did! Virginia's face had been a study, at that moment. Pleasure over unexpectedly seeing Peter. Annoyance that he should be calling on another girl. Envy that he had constituted himself the latter's champion. And, mingled with it all, the fixed determination that, if this Prudence chit had had a certain innings—pity being akin to love! —she, Virginia Dale, would show her her true place, and the impossibility of holding any man's attention when a so-much-better equipped rival was in the field. But to return to Peter's entry. He had shaken Prudence by the hand, bowed to Virginia, given the barest nod to Traymore, and been presented to the mistress of Green Gables by her palpitant young daughter. "Miss Prudence forgot her gloves when she left the party. And so I've brought them bnck to her." He produced a pair of long white kids. Virginia giggled. "Wearing gloves at a ball's quite oldfashioned." He turned to Mrs. Page. "Yon have a beautiful old home here. I was longing to rent it from you this summer, but the agent held up his hands in horror at the idea. Said you wouldn't consider it for a moment." Mrs. Page gave back his smile. It was infectious, somehow. "If we'd rented it to you, we'd have had to turn out, ourselves." "That would have been a calamity." His glance instinctively went to Prudence. The mother saw it. Then: "Perhaps one day you'll come and see my present quarters? Pear-Tree Cottage isn't a patch on this, of course, but it's a quaint little place." So he was extending an invitation to Prudence and her mother, was he? thought Virginia, angrily. All that talk about being a hermit and no lady's man was not—pure rot! He'd been only trying to get rid of her! "The last time I came to see you. you weren't so cordial." Jinny tossed her head. "But I s'pose I'm not sufficiently old-fashioned to meet your ideas." Peter Armstrong gave a lazy smile. "You came at the wrong moment, when I was conducting a rather dangerous experiment. And -when I'm working I don't invite ladies into the laboratory, in any case."

"Came at the wrong moment" had she? The casually-spoken words seemed to have a double meaning. Perhaps lie thought she's done it again to-day? "Butting in where she wasn't wanted," as Virginia herself would have elegantly expressed it, was a brand-new experience for the spoilt young woman. She turned to Mrs. Page, with a smirk. Seems my ways are too 'modern' for poor Peter! But one would have thought an inventor, of all people, up-to-date, and always on the search for something new!" Bert Traymore moved his chair to sit by Prudence. He loathed the Armstrong fellow, but he wasn't going to run away a second time. And it did seem, oddly enough, that the chap was keen on Prudence. He made quite a little queen of her, last night, and now was on her track again to-day. He'd "get back" at Armstrong by being doubly attentive to Prudence. It would annoy that plain-spoken motlier, too. The old lady had snubbed him on the gambling business, and he could plainly see she disapproved of him. Of course, that let him out of the marrying question, but it was a little galling none the less. "You haven't a word to spare for mc to-day," he contrived to whisper reproachfully in the girl's ear. "I'm feeling hurt." But somehow, Bert's crocodile pathos failed to register with Prudence She cared for him . . . oh, yes . . . but she was still sore from Virginia's rude remarks, and from Bert's failure to please her mother, when, after all, it would have surely been so easy to be nicj . . And he hadn't struck her in the way lit should have done. And ... and somehow . . . Peter Armstrong's presence always made him by comparison, seem a little "trivial." Subconsciously, Prudence sensed it. After a vain attempt to cajole her, Traymore rose, and announced he must be going. "You'd better come along, too, Jinny." He contrived, by means of a wink which no one but Jinny saw, to indicate that Armstrong ought to be left alone with Prudence and her mother. "You can run mc back in your car." Virginia bade her farewells with a languid, patronising smile, though inwardly she was furious at the turn of events. Prudence saw them off, a whole medley of turbulent feeling surging within her, chief of which was heartache. After they had gone, she saw a scrap lying on the path, picked it up, and before she had realised it was a letter to another woman, had begun to read it. "My darling Jinny," it commenced. Involuntarily, and before she could stop herself, Prudence's eye ran to the signature. And what she read was::—"Yours always and forever, Bert." (To be continued daily.)