OUR SERIAL STORY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 56, 16 February 1911, Page 9

OUR SERIAL STORY

HER DEAREST WISH.

(Continued.)

“Wliene have you come from now ?” asked Sir James, regarding him with an admiring and yet pitying eye; for the face and form were handsome and even grand, but the expression of the eye and mouth was that which makes women, when they ee it, sigh and grow sad, though they know not why.

“Africa. Thank I'm going back. I Should have gone before this, but my man, the steward at Leafmore, has been worrying me. Says that the place is going to pieces and that he wants me to go down there. Let it go to pieces!! Who cares? Certaanily not I.” “Wiiy not go down there and try and settle down for a time?” asked Sir James. “Look here. Gaunt, you know the old story of the machine that woufld go too fast.” “I daresay. Stopped all at once, diddn’t it? And you tlidnk I sludl stop like the machine? Welti, why oot? What does it matter?” He laughed a grim, short laugh. “You doctors tiliink life’s the most important of ail things; that’s where you make the mistake. No use offering you a fee 1 suppose?” The famous physician, Sir James Starke, and the famous traveller, Lord Gaunt, bad been at college together, though Sir James was much the elder.

Sir James laughed and shook his head.

“Go down to Lealmone for a while, Gaunt.”.”

“I’ll see,” said his lordship. He took up his hat, and helid it in his hand, then he said, siitlessly: “Do you happen to know a Lady Lascelles ?”

“Lady Pauline Lascelles, do you mean,?” “I daresay.” “Oh, yes; slie is a patient of mine. Why do you ask.” “Oh, for no particular reason. I just met her—n>et a niece of hers, a Miss—Mhs—singular name; I've forgotten it.” “You mean Decima Deane,” said Str James, his keen face lighting up. “Oh, yes—the loveliest, dearest girl in the world.”

He laughed and chuckled as at some private joke. “What the devil are you laugliing at?” inquired Gaunt, with languid surprise.

i “Oh, at the girl,” said Sir James. I “You know, or, rather, you. don’t I know, that she has been brought up i by Lady Pauline on a system of her own—l mean her ladyship’s own. I Innocence, absolute innocence and I purity, combined with a knowledge ' of everything but—er—but the things ) most girls know at two-thirds Decima's age.” “Ah; does it answer?” asked Lord ■ Gaunt. booking xiito his hat. j “Well—yes. That is to say, the . system has produced .the sweetest and most fascinating mixture of frankj news and innocence; the audacity of a j child and the sweetness of a girl; but . how it wi’i answer presently, when— I when the girl suddenly discovers that she is a woman. we shaßl see. Hare I you seen much of her?” ! “About one hour and a quarter,” ! said Ixxrd Gaunt, wearily. “And ! judging train Lady Lascelles’ manner, | I am not likely ever to make up the other three-quarters.” “And weren’t you struck with her?” “The aunt?” “Dash it -all, no! The girl—Decima!” “Don’t know. ’Pon my word, I scarcely .noticed her.” He yawned and took out his cigarette-case. “Good-bye, Starke. I’ll think over your advice.” “And won’t take it ?” J “I daresay not. Good-bye.” J He left the house and walked across J the park to his flat in Prince’s Manj morn. Men and women—especial My i the tatter—glanced at the handsome. Listless face curiously, and now and again the passers-by said something like this to each other: ! “That’s the famous Lord Gaunt. I Great traveller, you know.” • But “the famous Lord Gaunt” J strode on, taking no heed, his eyes I fixed before him. His flat was on. ‘ the first floor. and as he entered the i vestibule. carpeted with lion and leo i |>ard skins, and lined with trophies of the chase, he smelted the scent of a cigarette < onnng from the library. He pushed t-he thick oak door open. ■ and standing on the threshold, looked lat a man lying full length on the saddle-bag couch. The man rose with a smile and a “Halloo, Barnard!” and Lord Gaunt stood stock still, with a face set and white, and .said nothing.

CHAPTER 111. I The two men stood and looked at 1 each other; Ix>rd Gaunt white and stern, tlie visitor with a pleasant but ‘ half-mocking smile. He was a fair man—one of those delicately fair men whose ago it is so difficult to tel!—with a good-looking, i almost handsome face, with bright bln® eyes, and shapely bps which were not comreak’d by a moustache, but j seemed. Together with the eyes, to say J “Believe me. my owner it the j>erj bonification of innocence and guileness. i He lias nothing to conceal, no bad j <-v:tscience to worry, no remorse to torI tore him. and so >ho faces the world ■ with a Mt’.wl and child-lake smile, and i wishes all men well.” i That is what the face had been trained to say. and it sr.id it with ai1 most invariable success; only on very rare occasions did tlie mask slip and ‘ the r*eal nature behind it reveal itself; i for. with all hie smiling lips, and his ; blue eyes. Morgan Tliorpe was an tin-

scrupulous viHiam, as false a man, as ever trod this vidian-ridden earth. He was dressed in a suit of light tweed which fitted 'his graceful figure to perfection, and as lie raised his hand.—white and well-formed as a woman’s—and lightly pushed back his heavy hair, which had been ruffled by the silken- sofa cushion, a splendid ring shone on the taper finger. Tlie two men formed a marked contrast. Lord Gaunt, with his classical face, tragic and almost aweinspiring ri» its whiteness and sternness, with his dark eyes lighted as by a smouldering fire; the other man fair and debonair, with the smile of an audacious child, or a heartless woman Laughing as she wounds. It was Morgan Thorpe who spoke first.

“How do you do?” he said

Hhs voice was low and soft, the voice that seems to sing, so supple, so flute-lake was it. They have that kind of voice in sunny Tuscany, and there must -have been some southern blood in Thorp’s veins to account for the voice and the smile. Lord Gaunt’s eyes remained on the pleasant boyish face.

“You have found me,” lie said, with that kind of calm which comes to the brave man in supreme moments.

Morgan Thorpe Laughed. “My dear fellow, how curt, how brusque! Is this the way in which to receive an old friend who has been searching for you for—how many weary months, years?” Lord Gaunt placed his hat on the table, and going to the fern-fibled fireplace, leaned on his elbow on the mantle-Hshelf, and regarded his visi’tor steadily. “How did you find me?” he asked, as a man asks of the physician how he had discovered the fatal disease.

The other man dropped back on the couch, stretched out his hand to the ciragctte-box of sandlewood which stood on a table within reach, took a cigarette and lighted it, arranged the cushions comfortably, and smiled uip at Gaunt’s stern, set face. “My dear Barnard—l beg your [Kirdon., 1 should say my dear Lord Gaunt! —why do you glare at me so reproachfully, and like a Banquo’s ghost?” he sa.id, with the soft voice pitched in a tone of banter which made Gaunt's teeth close tightly and caused his 'hand to clench at his side. “It is I who ought to look black and overwhelm you with reproaches. Just think of it! Two years’ ago—” Gaunt’s face worked, but his voice was stern and cold as he broke in:

“There is no need to go back to the past.” , “Pardon me, but I really think tliere is!” retortxd Morgan Thorpe, stretching hiimself hi&uriousHy, like a cat on a soft hearth-rug. “Your manner is so—what sihal.l I say?— inhospitable, not to say repellent, that I feel it to be absolutely necessary to state the caso for, shuU' we say, the plaintiff?”

Gaunt did •not move a limb or the eyes which rested upon the face upturned to him. “What is the case?” continued Morgan Thorpe, delicately knocking the ash trim his cigarette on to the inlaid table. “Three years ago”— he half closed his eyes and regarded the wliite-faced man before ham through the narrow slite, as the cat regards the wretched mouse lying between her pa>ws—“you and I, and another who shall be nameless, were the closest friends. We had met as fellow travellers in an Alpine pass— Alpine pass sounds quite ‘novelish,’ doesn’t it? I lake the sound, A'llpime pass!—We spent the Might with sundry guides and porters in a snowbound hut. The acquaintance thus pleasantly commenced rijienied into a friendship which, I trust, may continue.”

Gaunt made a gesture of impatience, but Morgaa Thorpe only smiled, ae the cat might might smile at t4ie contortions of the mouse.

“You are travelling alone and are solitary. I have my sister with, me; a charming gi.nl whom to see and to know is to—love!”

Gaunt bit his lip and drew a long breath.

“You see. you learn to know, you love her ! For reasons best known to yourself you travel incog. You state that your name is Edward! Barnard, a gentleman of independent means, travelling for pleasure and instniction. As Edward Barnard you lay siege to my sister's heart, and you take by storm that precious citadel.” Gaunt shifted one foot, but his eyes never loft the smiling mocking face. As the tortured man on the rack Hatches the executioner, so he watched Morgan. Thorpe. “The lady is, of course, virtuous. There is only one road to happiness—the path which leads to matrimony, and as Edward Barnard, you take it. You and the beautiful Laura are married at tlie little English church at Vevey, on—what is the date?” Lard Gaunt remained stonily silent; like the figure of the Sphinx in his set calmness. “No matter; I have the date om tlie certificate in my pocket-book. Yon are married with all the forms and ceremonies prescribed by rigid Law and exacting Church, and you set out for youtr honeymoon. Alas! it is a short honeymoon! Before it has scarce begun to wane, you—” Gaunt’s self-restraint seemed to fail liim at this point, and he broke in with scarcely suppressed passion: “I discovered that the woman I had married was an adventuress—a woman who— ’’ “Pardon?” said Morgan Thorpe, I softly. “Remember lam her bro- | ther. and spare me! Do not let us ! indulge in recrimiuations; it is child- | ish, useless. Let us say that, you i discovered that there was such in- ; compatibility of temper that you i found it inqxissi'ble to live with iier. ShaHl we put it that way?” Lord Gaunt made no response, and the soft- and musical voice went on.

(To be Continued.)