The House on the Sand

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1930, Page 22

The House on the Sand

§ By MRS. VICTOR RICKARD. | liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiNiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiir,

CHAPTER Xlll.—Continued. Mrs. Havillard gave a little gasp of Mervyn was in love withthe girl, and the girl was in love with him. v That was all completely evident. Something prevented Carlotta Blankney. from marrying Mervyn, and the question for-.Mrs. Havillard to decide, was whether" or not she should leave matters to fate, or put her own ever-ready finger into the pie, and create confusion and separation.' 'The reason which Carlotta had not told her was what she must discover. She consoled herself by remembering that at least she'had plenty of time and that she had certainly disarmed Carlotta, whose first attitude had been everything but friendly. What was the reason which kept Carlotta and Mervyn Trevor, apart ?. , . Once she.knew tljat, she.would have the key to the whole situation. She heard footsteps on the gravel path outside the open window. Two men walking together. Someone was with Mervyn. She turned her head to see who it might be, and then, getting to her feet she stared in amazement at the man who stood, in his bold way, looking in at the door. "Well, Cousin Grace!" he said with a familiar laugh. surprise. "Needham! " she said holding out her' hands. "Whatever has brought you here I" "Come, come —only a handshake! It wasn't so once, Gracie," he came and kissed her, and then standing back, stared down at her. It always amused him to make an emotional attack upon any woman; He could see that his cousin Grace, whom he had jilted when she was in her early 'teens, was still terribly affected by his sudden appearance in the little room. Hard and worldly as she was, she ihad flushed under the .look, of his eyes and the"> careless-insolence -of his kiss. ■ In a moment she had recovered herself., "What on earth'.brought you here, Needham?" she asked, sitting down on the sofa. . "A whim," he laughed, looking at Mervyn. "I thought I-might see. you. I'm putting up at the village*, inn, with my old friend Tanner. You grow younger not. older Grace. What, if I may ask it, brought you here?" "I came to chaperone Mervyn," she looked at the young man who had walked to the window and stood there, smoking, and waching the clear evening sky. "He needed it, I heard. He ha? got a very'pretty housekeeper." Needham Frewen crossed his long legs. "So, ho!" he said whistling softly. "Is there a wedding ring in it?" he lowered his voice. "No," she shook her head. She hadcomplete control of herself again. It had been a shock to see Needham,. but a queerly attractive 6hock. She owed him more than one unpaid 6core, arid yet , yet—-she found it hard to keep up a grudge against him. "There's been a wedding ring. In any case," Mervyn ■had wandered out of earshot, "I should object. She's an adventuress with large blue eyes and a baby face. . The type who can appeal to the strong siient man. ' She has played her cards very well indeed." Needhairi was hardly interested. "Andi are you going to evict her, eh?" "For Mervyn's sake." # •' "There was a wedding ring in' it?" "Yes, she's—or says she is— a. widow." "And why should you doubt it?" he lolled in his chair. He was thinking that Grace had still her full share of good looks. She> was a handsome—badtempered shrew. If he had married' her those long twenty years ago, she would have led him a life of it. * , "What brought you here?" she asked. She had been watching him 'for 'a silent, concentrated moment. '"You didn't come to see me, for you couldn't have known that I was at Cuckoo Hill." "That's a story which will keep," he said, with his hateful smile of self-con-fidence and assurance. "I'm staying at the inn, and will come up here again to-morrow to have a look at you. Perhaps I shall get a glimpse of Mervyn's housekeeper?" He got up heavily and stood in the centre of the room. "Are'you alone?" she asked with a swift challenge in her eyes. He shook his head. "Hermoine is now sleeping the sleep of the unjust in the village inn," he gave a careless laugh. " She came with me. I did not ask her to- She insisted." 44 You have not changed." Mrs. Havillard watched him steadily. "You are •the. flame.*::cruel, relentless brigand of a man'that you always were." Her reproaches seemed only to amuse him for he laughed again. "I take that as a compliment," he said. "Ah, here is Mervyn,", he turned towards Trevor who came in through the window. "Good-night, Grace." When he walked out of the open French window into the garden, Need- ; ham Frewen looked up at the house. A window under the eaves was open, and a girl stood there, clear in the moonlight. Frewen 1 started, and stifled a sudden exclamation. In a flash - she was gone, and the blind drawn down. Mrs. Havillard waited for Mervyn to come back to the drawing room, and when he came she greeted him affectionately. "I've had a talk with Carlotta," she said, "and I think I've persuaded her to stay on., I am very frank, as you know," she went on quickly. "I got straight to the point. We had already met when she was crossing over from France, Mervyn, so we were not altogether strangers. She confided in me then to some extent, and I knew that she was a young widow." - "You* have been a perfect brick, Gracie," Trevor said gratefully. "How can I thank you enough? I know one thing for certain. She does care for me." : "There is some barrier," Mrs. Havillard said thoughtfully. "I wish I could discover what it-is. : '' Has she never mentioned her people?" "Never." . • s "Nor said who she is? Not even vaguely?" Mervyn crossed the room and sat down a little further off. He did not altogether like this discussion. "I could not ask her questions as though, she was in the witness box," he said with a touch of temper.;" "She has a perfect right to. keep her own secrets." ; "Not if she marries you, Mervyn," Mrs. Hallivard said firmly, "She does love you, and if this invisible barrier is strong enough to divide her from you, it means that. Carlotta Blankney has something to hide which is so damaging and so shameful that not only will she not speak of it • but ehe will abandon her happiness and yours because of its existence. It ia something you cannot ignore."

Mervyn flamed up. "I won't listen to such things being said of her," he spoke stormily. "There is nothing, nothing whatever in her life of . which she is ashamed. You need only look at her." "Then why'not ask her who she is?" Mrs. Havillard said. CHAPTER XIV. Lord Braeside was in the habit of looking at his world through a pair of strong lensed field glasses. He, took very little exercise, and sat .in a comfortable chair in the'warm sunshine of the bright September day. Leaves on the trees were beginning to turn, and the woods below the terrace flamed into patches of yellow and scarlet. The land'- dropped sheer into a valley below • Knowl Park, where once there had been a; small temple of Venus erected ini the Gothic period when a form of Palais Royal art was fashionable. As its original purpose was no longer existent, Lord Braeside often established himself there at the end of a flagged terrace, well out of the wind and able to enjoy the sunshine. By the help of his glasses, Lord Braeside could bring the distant world near. A moving speck against the woodland became a bird, and not only that but intensely magnified, for he was able to see far more minutely than if he had been standing close to the object he watched. Lord Braeside was expecting Graco Havillard. By this time Mrs. ■ Havilard and the housekeeper at Cuckoo Hill had mot. He was extremely anxious to know how the meeting had ended. If he knew anything of women, Lord Braeside, told himself, Mrs. Blankney would put up a fight. He refused to believe in her. The demure, blue-eyed girl who had sat under the tree in the garden. How those same blue eves- had defied him and all he stood for!' ' • ' ' '

' Trevor was to be saved from h&r; this youthful widow; this baby-faced adventuress. Lord Braeside had a very definite reason for interesting himself in the question. .-; / Much of the property was • entailed. The rolling downs and the woods below the house must pass, at his death, to the next-of-kin. Alistair Forde, his brother, was childless. He had lived the life of a roue, balladed from one European capital to another, and married, late in life, a French woman whom Lord Braeside had never seen and did not wish to see.

His own son, Viscount Amesfort, had followed the family path to perdition. Lived a wild, riotious life forsaking his home and his ties and ending where and how, even his own father did not know. Ronald Defries, a distant relative, was heir presumptive to Knowl Park, the great, towering house in Eaton Square; and,-the wide lands of Amesforth in Devonshire.

Beyond the entailed ~ property there was a delightful smaller property known as Petty France, in' - Somerset, and a great deal of money, which Lord Braeside. could dispose of as he chose. , His choice,.in this respect, had fallen upon Mervyn Trevor. , It was r of .great, importance, therefore, that M'ervvn Trevor should make what Lord Braeside regarded as the right sort of marriage. He had seen more than enough of ill-considered unions, and the case of his own son, who had married against his will, (the-pretty daughter of Lord Braeside's park-keeper. That she had been; lovely had not saved her. The dissolute young heir to the property had deserted his wife in Paris, and what subsequently, became' of her Lord Braeside neither knew nor cared. His ambition, his family pride, his hopes concerning'the future, had all failed him because of-his' son's marriage;. or so Lord Braeside liked to believe.' ' ,

He had known Mervyn Trevor einc© he was a small boy; and knew his father intimately. In lome distant way Lord Braeside ■ considered Trevor as having taken the place of his son. Now, for the first time, there-had been complications into the life of young Trevor, and these complications had been brought about by the advent of a girl, who posed as a married woman, and declared that she was a widow. ...' '>•

How pretty she had looked, sitting under the shadow of the dark cedar tree, and how demure! Lord Braeside mistrusted her quiet ways and downcast eyes. She was an adventuress, but a ciever one, who knew her metier far too well to paint her face and attract by drawing attention to herself and her quite undeniable beauty. „ . (To be continued daily.)