A TARDY WOOING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9139, 11 July 1906, Page 2

A TARDY WOOING.

By CHARLES W. HATHAWAY,

CHAPTER XXXIIf.

THE MISSING RING

There was silence in the Toom for wnat seemed a very lengthy interval, Cyrilla staring at her lover with her own face growing as pale as his ; and 1 he leaning toward her, waiting for the reply with such eager expectancy depicted on every feature that she withdrew herself from him with a gasp and a shudder.

Why had he asked her such an irrational question? Why was he waiting for hex reply as if he saw nothing absurd in it?

"I could not have heard you correctly!" she cried, believing that she had found on explanation of all that perplexed her. "I must have misunderstood what you said, or else y%u did not hear me. I was telling you that Chris Kennett brought a young woman here to-day "

"Who had the face of an angel? Yes, pray go on."

'She was a bold, vulgar thing!" Cyrilla retorted. "And yet she had the insolence to pretend that you had married her."

"And had I?"

"What are you saying " shrieked his hearer. "Collect yourself, Harold. If you jest with me on. suoh a subject it is unpardonable; if you are in earnest, what am I to think of you — what am I to beiieve?" r

"How can I say, who do not know what to think of myself?" he answered, drawing his fingers across his brows. "For a moment your question seemed to pierce the most hiding from me all that happened in those days that must have intervened between my landing at Dover and going to CoUoson. When you spoke of the ohurch and the ring there flashed across my vision a picture of a hoary-headed clergyman, before whom I stood or knelt, whole the many-colored lights of a stained glass window flecked his surplice, and some one— was it Mephistopheles himself? — whispered in my ear, every whisper sending a sharp arrow into my burning brain."

"Do you mean that you dreamed this?"

"I suppose so; and yet how real it seems ! Again lam staggering toward the church porch, that the air may play upon my head because it throbs — ah! how intolerably it throbs ! And then I sit there, leaning my brow against the cool, mossy stones, tQI she, with those eyes 60 full of divineet compassion, comes to me and leads me away."

"But this could only be a dream!" Oyiilla repeated, "A silly, meaningless dream !"

"Hushl Why did you speak? Your voice has driven away the reboUection* that were coming back to my mind!"

"They are not very flattering ones to me: ' she pouted. "It does not appear to have been my image that filled your thoughts.'

"No ; I never saw the look in your eyes that beamed on me from hers when she led me gently to some quiet green spot, where I lay calmed by the mesmeric touch of her soft hands till they banished all pain, and if I dreamed at all it was of heaven."

"He is mad!" said Cyriila to herself. "He is mad! If anyone should hear him talk in this strain it will get to the ears of Eustace Leyland, the next of kin, and he will take steps to have him placed under control. And then, adieu to~all my hopes of being lady of the Towers!"

"For goodness sake, Harold !" she cried aloud, "don't talk such nonsense ! It is too mystical fox the common sense, everyday world. Why not confess at once that when you arrived at Dover ycz -went and

dined with some «? the officers stationed there, and fcund their -wine boo- heady!"

"Tlink so if you please," he coldly responded. "I have no better solution of the mystery to offer you."

"There is no mystery about the affair!" she declared, "except in so far as it puzzles me to think you could imagine I should credit the tale you have taken such trouble to invent.

"Let us understand each other!" he said, stung by the unpleasant significance of her laugh. "Do you ireally believe that I have been drawing on my imagination in order to veil a disgraceful truth? Do you really believe that I was hurt in some drunken orgy, and came to you with a degrading lie on my lips?"

"What else can I think?" demanded CyriUa. "You dare not have come to me at all if you had spent at the feet of another those days for which you refuse to account!"

"For which I Tefuse to account!" he echoed, scarcely able to realise that she doubted his integrity, or that she deemed him capable of descending to depths of meanness from which he shrank with horror.

"Ah!" ah© exclaimed, watching his changing countenance jealously, "you hesitate; you cannot answer me. You are guilty — you are guilty. Some wretched woman beguiled you from me; some one; perhaps, in Paris. There weire plenty who would have given the world to win such a rich, handsome husband as Mr Oufcram of the Towers! It was £0 her you gave the missing Ting, and now you are ashamed to avow it!"

"Cyrillal" and, taking hold of both .her hands, he compelled her to look at him the while be spoke. "I swear by the memory of rotor mother and mine that never have I spoken word of love to any girl bat yourself! You have wounded me deeply by your suspicions. As regards what happened to me when I arrived at Dover, I have told you all I know. I remember following from the steamer the servant Sir Jasper sent to lead me to your house."

"We sent no servant. We never knew at what hour or on what day yon landeu . '

Harold put his hand to bis head.

"I have done," be acid, moodily. "You iamb think and say -what you mil. A

little more and I shall begin to doubt the evidence of my own senses."

He walked to a window to compose himself and Cyrilla wrung her hands. Yes, he was subject to attacks of insanity; there was no other explanation of his extraordinary disappearance. What an unfortunate creature she was! Must she relinquish her hopes of being his wife, after all?

A fit of violent hyetexia now ensued ; and, as the paroxysms became more and more acute every time her wild glances rested on Harold, he withdrew, more dissatisfied with, than sorry for, his wayward bride-elect.

Cyrilla felt no compunction for the pain she had inflicted on him, but she was very much grieved for herself.

No one was so harassed as she had been during this engagement of hers! With Harold perplexing her on the one hand, and Chris Koarnett threatening on the otheT, hers had been a difficult course to steer. Would it land her at last at the El Dorado her heart was fixed on attaining, ox wreck her bark just as she was in sight of her haven?

Married to a man who might at any moment be seized with an attack of lunacy! The prospect was a horrible one; yet lose the dear delight of reigning at the Towers she neither could nor would.

And then she pondered long, coming at last to the conclusion that matters should take their course.

"One must always run some risks in matrimony!" she sighed; "and Harold, poor fellow! should prove incapable of managing bis affairs it will throw more power into my hands. » No one need ever know that his mind is affected. I should have to keep Eustace Leyland at bay, or else "

She stopped short, for an evil thought had -stolen into her scheming brain. At first she recoiled from it with a shudder, putting her fingers into her ears, burying her face in her pillows and crying :

"No, no, I could never do that!"

But the thought returned again and again, till she grew accustomed to it, and her horror of yielding to the temptation of acting upon those evil promptings grew fainter and more faint:

At last she boldly asked herself the question from which .she had once shrunk with shame and terror:

Why should she -not incite Eustace Leyland to prove his kinsman's insanity, and step into Harold's place?

Of the two cousins she had decidedly preferred the former, till prudence reminded her. that she must not throw herself away on a struggling lawyer. If the Towers were his, she would wed him without hesitation, for the more she saw of Harold the more fully she comprehended that she should never reach the high standand at which he aimed.

To be a leader of fashion, to gather about her such frivolous men and women as she had met at Mrs Machines', and outrival all her female friends by the splendor of her costumes, these were the joys 6he craved.

She did not sigh for Harold's love, but for the Outonam diamonds, and with the cynical Eustace she fancied she saw a better chance of enjoying life than with bis less worldly cousin.

"If I were to place it in his power to reign at the Towers, his gratitude must insure hie using me well,' 'she argued; and os the idea grew ond grew, haunting her visions in » the night as well as her waking hours.

Meanwhile Chris Kennett remained in the house, carefully attended to by order of Sir Jasper, who could not see his old friend suffering without, compassionating him.

"After all it is safer to have him here, because we can take care that no one goes near him but our own people," CyriUa decided. "His surgeon says he is to be kept quiet. He shall be kept quiet enough! Papa may go and chat with him over old times* as much as he likes, but no one else."

However, she was wary enough to try and keep her enemy in good humor by visiting him herself daily, and giving orders that every dainty taken to him should be represented as coming from her.

(Continued on page 3.)

And Chjis, as crafty as the beauty, was almost servile in his gratitude, never naming Hairold Outram, nor appearing to retain any "ill-feeling towards her for having jilted him m favor of her richer lover. Sometimes, however, when he was most profuse in his acknowledgment of her goodness, Miss Dartison detected an expression playing around his mouth that seemed to contradict his humble phrases ; and at such moments 6he would resolve that at all hazards she -would g-et a~vgay from England and from bin. But how was it to be done? Eustace Leyland seldom came to Chislehurst now, amd wnen he did he devoted himself to Linda Shirley, with whom he conversed on art and literature ; subjects into which Cyrilla could not enter. As for Harold — even if she could conqxier her growing dread of him — his undisguised idoldness, his displeased sense that they did not think alike, made it difficult to hint that if they went abroad immediately alter the ceremony, Lady Dartison's recent di&eaee need not be made a reason for postponing it any longer. Restless, dissatisfied, as much with herBelf as her prospects, who could envy the beautiful Cyriila? Brooding over her schemes made her so irritable that it was only for Sir Jasper's sake the high-spirited Linda consented to remain; and Harold Outram — unable to hide from himself that he had made a mistaken choice — began to look so grave, so haggard, that everyone was -enquiring what ailed him. "I fancy he has not been quite himself evar since that accident of his," Eustace Leyland remarked in Cyxilla's hearing, and sh? looked at him so oddly that he was about to apologise for it, when the person of whom he was speaking came into the room. Mr Leyland laid his ann on his cousin's arm. "I was just talking about you, old fellow. You look as if you needed a. change. "Why not have a trip to Paris oir Vienna? Too much of the London fog makes the strongest of us dull as ditch water." "I am very well," Mr Outram responded, curtly, and changed the subject, not perceiving that Cyrilla became very silent, and 6at watching him over hes fan. Was his malady increasing? she was asking herself. In what other way could bis moodiness be accounted for? She spoke, and he did not seem to hear hex ; she edged her chair further from the one he had taken, but he did not appear to miss her. On the contrary, he sat abstractedly watching Linda and Eustace Leyland, who had stepped on to the- lawn to look at a cluster of flowering shrubs the artist proposed introducing into a picture on which she was engaged. Then Cyrilla remembered tales she had heard of men whose brains were diseased being suddenly seized with an impulse to murder the- creature dearest to them. What if he were brooding over such an impulse, aiid her own life were in imminent danger! She sprang from her seat, meditating flight, when the door opened and Wyhnie appeared at it. She came swiftly forward, saying, agitatedly, that Chris Kennett had heard that Mr Outram was in the house, and insisted on seeing him. Everything else was so utterly forgotten in anxiety to prevent this meeting, that she flew toward Wynnie crying angrily: "How daTe you bring such messages here? Never presume to enter this room again when I have a visitor !" As she spoke she gave the young girl 1 such a Tougu push that she would Have fallen if Harold Outram had not promptly interposed and caught her. From the shock, or some other cause, she was trembling so violently that he was compelled to sustain her .till she could recover Jierself ; and there was a piteous appeal in the soft, sweet eyes momentarily raised to his, that thrillled through him as Cyrilla's bolder and more, ardent glances had never done. "Got" cried Miss Dartison again, with a stamp and an imperious gesture. "Tell Kennett that Mt Outram is engaged ; it is most impertinent of him to ask such a favor !" "Impertinent or not, I intend to comply with his request," said Harold, firmly. "He cannot be moro desirous of seeing me- than I am of putting a few questions to him. Will you, Miss Moyle, kindly show me the way?" But she had already disappeared, and Cyrilla, though raging inwardly, would have been compelled to supply the information herself, when, seated in an invalid chair, malicious triumph depicted on his . ghastly features, Chris was wheeled into her presence. She could comprehend now that it was to warn her of nis approach that Wynnie had ventured to break in upon her privacy. But, instead of feeling grateful for this attempt to prepare hex for the coming of her persecutor, she only grew angrieT that it had not been made more quickly and adroitly. However, fortune seemed disposed to befriend her. The exertions he had undergone, and perhaps his mental excitement, had a greater effect on Kennett's weakened frame than b& had been prepared foT ; and when Harold drew near, saying, l "You wished to speak with me?" he was too' faint to make any reply. "Wheel him back to bed," said Cyrilla, imperatively. "It was madness to let him leave it." She was ©beyed, but, in spite of her strenuous efforts to prevent it, Mr Outram chose to accompany him; and, wild with wiath and fear, she ran upstairs to find some one on whom to wreak her fuory. It was Wynnie who was to blame, and into Wyniav&'fi chamber she burst «> suddenly, that the girl, who was kneeling beside a table weeping over something lying upon it, had not tame to hide it from Cyrilla'fl 'piercing sight. It was a ring! Miss" Dartison had seen, had identified it. With a furious exclamation, Cyrilla was clutching the hand that "held !t firmly clasped to its owner's ' Bosom.