THE SECRET FOE: OR, A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4895, 22 April 1887, Page 4

THE SECRET FOE: OR, A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE.

CHATTER XVII. the lasso's voek--the father cojies. Edward Dungan half straightened himself for the murderous spring- that was to hurl him with deadly certainty upon the man he hated and feared. But scarcely had he done so, when his hat was crushed over his eyes, and, before he knew what had happened, a noose tightened about his throat with a jerk that brought him senseless to tho ground. The jerk had dragged him violently backward, his head striking as violently against the bole of a monster oak. He fell like a log, and the open dirk beside him.

For a little all was still, and not a movement, not a sound, save the quick tread of tho man whose life hail been saved, and who had already disappeared. Then, from behind an intervening tree, Carlie Beuelere stole into view, her beautiful hair bared to the snow, and her beautiful face set in a white, rigid horror. She went hesitatingly to the supine form and bent over the handsome, upturned features ; then, with shrinking- abhorrence, laid her fingures on the wrist of the hand from •which the murderous blade had just fallen. With the same slirinkiug rupug-nance, she next removed the noose from his neck, and slipped the coil into her pocket. That done, she paused a moment irresolute, her fair face turned toward tho path she knew her lover was pursuiug, though his steps were no longer audible. He had passed from the sheltered spot that, but for her, would have -witnessed his deiith, and was treading the deeper snow beyond. She ended the hesitation with a last glance at tho insensible form at her feet, and. a tirdlike pursuit round the wood. "Stop! Stop!" she cried, liev voice strange and muifled in the thickening storm as she ran.

It reached Edward Ross's ears.

Panting, and white us the Knew that covered her from head to foot, she put her hands into those outstretched to meet her.

"Do not delay me!" she interposed, quieeriugly, upon his impassioned outburst of alarm. "' He will seek your life ! Beware of him ' Oh, promise me to beware of him '. I have, by Heaven's mercy, saved it this time, but—" " You !" "Yes, yes ! Some warning- intuition turned me from my homeward flight to meet him—your stop-brother I mean. I discovered him stealing after you, knife ready in hand. I dared not call. That would have been to kill you in it. I crept up and slipped my lasso over his head. Oh," breaking- upon his agitated exclamation, "it was easy enough. I learned the trick of a Mexican horse-tamer papa onco had here, and still frequently practice it as an exercise and amusement. The lasso is light, and habitually carried in my cloak pocket." " But he?—-where is he ?" asked Edward Kpss, in stern yet tender tones as she paused. "Insensible near the spot where you were to die. The back of his head struck against a tree. It was a heavy blow ; but he will come to with the air and snow \ipon his face. And I must get home. 'Tis best he should not know, nor even suspect more than when he fell. He did not see me, and it was all so quick and confusing." "Yes, you must get home," said Edward, with emotion. " And rest content, I shall guard the life Heaven has spared to me through your dear hands ! and may Heaven bless and keep you, my precious one." He took her up in his arms. Looking up into tho fine, manly face bending tenderly over hor own, she said in quivering accents: " Forgivo my past doubts. That murderous hand has gained you an xmdying trust that no human power can ever shake. Heaven guard you." With tho words she was gone, breaking from his clasp, and vanishing from his sight beyond the cloud of falling snow. After a little, remembering her bared head, she paused a moment to draw the hood of her cloak up again, and then sped homeward by a detour that took her wide of the spot whjre she had left Dungan. She reached her room without meeting any one, both Mrs Ross and Miss Ingham asleep in their respective apartments. She sat down to think.

There was a terrible significance in the dark deed she had frustrated—a significance that not only acquitted Edwprd Ross, but implicated Lemuel Haigh. " Could it," she thought, " have been ho that was here masked last night ? No : the figure was larger and slightly taller. But he has lied ! For some purpose he has sworn that Edward Ross is Edward Dungan." She all at once sprang to her feet. " And my father ? Is that a lie, too ?" But the next instant the light and color fled from her eyes and cheeks. "Papa's letter!" she breathed, sobbingly. " That cannot be questioned ! And it tells mo lam the living image of my father. I am not, then, quite at Lemuel Haig-h's mercy." She glanced at tho mantel-clock, thinking, with a shudder, that she might now be called to see that dread father any moment. The first exaltation of feeling had faded in a dull fear of what could not be escaped.

With a purely human emotion she thought of the man she loved, and the man to whom she must sacrifice her young life, little dreaming how frightfully beyond her worst conceptions that sacrifice was to be made.

But the day closed without bringing the dreaded trial, and also, without her burdening Miss Ingham's mind with any of the afternoon's events.

When that lady came in, near dusk, they drew their chairs to the hoarth, and sat there anxiously, and almost silently, occupied with the thought of A.nson Beuclerc. As the tea-bell rang, Miss Ingham rose and opened one of the windows. "Ho Avill not come to-night, dear, rest assm-ed," she said, hopefully, as she shut the sash. "It has stopped snowing, but it is bleak and threatening beyond description."

"I trust you maybe right," answered Carlie, her thoughts" divided between the dread of meeting Anson Beuclerc and the would-be assassin whose step on the .stairs had caught her car just before Miss Ingham's appearance. She had nerved herself to the wise course of meeting; him with iinchanged manner. But at sight of his smiling, upturned face, as he waited for thorn at the balustrade below, she turned faint with repulsion. , Miss Ingham looked at him and exclaimed :

"How startlirgly palo you are!" she cried. " Arc you ill ?"

"Not ill, but a lit'.lo shaken up," lie returned, easily, giving hor his arm. "It snowed so fiercely that I went out with an umbrella for Garlic, and was luckless enough to most with a trip that nearly broke my skull. By the by," smiling over his shoulder at Garlic as she followed into the tea-room, " you ought to have heard my call." •'Yes?" returned Carlic, composedly, evading a direct answer by that inane interrogation.

Dungan lyilf smiled, and then, as Mrs Ross made an anxious remark about the '• accident," adroitly changed the subject. On repairing to the library at the close of the meal, he managed to separate the girl from the other ladies.

" I have," he said, in low, rapid tones, Ids oyea steadily upon hern, " I have to thank you for a double service—a secrecy I could never have expected, and an act that saved mo from the conurission of crime, the very; thought of which now curdles the blood in my veins. While thanking you, permit me to restore this. I found it beside mo on recovering my senses." He placed in her hand one of the fur gauntlets she had slipped into her cloak pocket before leaving the house. She could not have spoken to save hor life. Watching her varying color, ho went on, with a sardonic smile:

" A few adroit questions on my return to the house elicited the fact that you are exceptionally expert in handling the lasso." Ho stopped. A servant had entered and approached tinnotieed.

On the man's silver tray lay two cards. In a moment the girl forgot everything else.

She took them with whitening lips. She read them with suspended breath "Leotee, Haioh."

"AsfcON BUUOLKBO."

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