WOMAN SCORNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 85, 11 April 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN SCORNED.

AWFUL VENGEANCE. 20 YEARS TO RIGHT A WRONG. DEATH OF FORMER LOVER AND SON. When in 1911, at the age of 21, the dashing young Hussar, Franz Tzetehen, the idol of the beauteous dairies of the Court of Vienna, and already reputed a Don Juan, won the heart of Marie Lezcinska, then employed as a shopgirl, only to betray her trust in him, he little dreamt that 20 years after the ghost of his inglorious past would rise up to send him. and the son he adored to suicides' graves and dash his highest hopes to the groun(l. At the time of their meeting, Marie was famed for her beauty and was sought after by the leading artists in that part of the world as model. Since her profile has been seen in almost every important gallery in Europe. She was engaged to be married to an artist who has since become world-famous, but that did not prevent Tzetehen seeking her out as the result of a drunken bet, and beginning a whirlwind courtship that ended in Marie forgetting her painter and agreeing to run away with the soldier, who assured her they would be married in less than a week. The marriage was deferred on one pretext after another, until one night the now disillusioned girl insisted on coming to an understanding with her lover in the rooms they occupied in an apartment house in Bundapest.

Already Married. I The man laughed in her face and asked her was she such a fool as to think that he, who could pick his bride from the richest and wealthiest dames of the court, even those of royal birth, could have seriously meant to marry a shopgirl. He proposed that she should become his mistress, adding that he had in fact contracted a very good marriage some weeks before knowing her, and that he was now so rich that he could afford to give a mistress all she wanted, provided she was reasonable. Marie refused, and left him that night. Her artist lover, oil learning the facts, offered to forgive the past and go on with the wedding arrangements, but Marie declined, and disappeared from her usual haunts. Nothing was heard of her until a year or so ago, when, in another name, she made her appearance in Budapest Society, apparently rich, and accompanied by a daughter more beautiful even than she had been at the same age. The daughter excited general admiration, and all the eligible young men in the most exclusive society paid court to her. But she had eyes for only one of her suitors, the most persistent of all the 21-year-old son of the cavalryman of other days. Like hig father, Charles Tzetehen had embraced the military career, and though there was no court whereat he could shine, he did shine at its equivalent, and he was assisted in doing so by a doting! father.

Despair. The young man was madly infatuated with Zita Klarinski, the name by which the girl was known, and when he found that she was proof against all suggestions ot corruption he proposed marriage, thinking that there could hardly be a girl in the world capable of refusing him. But he was mistaken. The girl laughed m jus face, and told him she had deliberately played with him because he was the son of her mothers betrayer, and this was ner "way of taking revenge. The young man appealed to the mother, only to find that she was as pitiless as her daughter, and that even if it were not so there was an effective barrier to their union m the fact that the girl with whom he was infatuated was his half-sister! Rushing back to his rooms, the lad wrote a hasty note to his father saying that he could not get over the loss of the heart* 1 Q ehot himself through the , The distracted father dashed to the hotel of the mother and daughter to reproach them for their heartlessness, but his reproaches died on his lips when he recognised in the mother the girl he had so cynically betrayed in his own youth and learned that the girl he had been willing to take as daughter-in-law was in tact his own daughter. With the mocking laughter of the two women ringing in his ears he fled, and later he was found lying dead beside the corpse of his son.

Romance has quickly followed on the tragedy, for the mother renewed her friendship with the artist to whom she had been engaged at the time of her betrayal, and Zita, the daughter, is to many the only son of the artist.