In Her Own Right,

Lake County Press, Issue 2669, 15 February 1917, Page 2

In Her Own Right,

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

By Lady Troubnldge, Author of “The Soul of Honour,” “The Cheat,” “Love the Locksmith,” “The Girl With the Blue Eyes,” Ac., &c- ---, [Copyright.]

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.—The Rollesden brougham conveys Lord Rollesden and his daughter, Lady Ivy, to the Palace, where she is to be presented to the King. On the way her father chides her for her views of life, and finally tolls her to do as she pleases, but ho will not be responsible for her. While she is waiting to be presented Lord Strevelsea turns up, and Lord Strevelsea’s interest and admiration are at once aroused. He cannot understand why she wishes to earn her own living. After the presentation, when they are driving home, Lord Rollesden tells Ivy that he is about to join her brothers at Marseilles. He has a seizure, and Lady Ivy makes one more appeal for affection, but, failing, she goes away. Keith Garrett, her father’s secretary, meets her, and, after mentioning that her father has told him she intends to go away, he begins to make love ardently. She tells him that, in consequence of what she is going to do, her father will leave her penniless. Ho allows her to escape. CHAPTER ll.—Lord Rollesden goes away in his motor-car, and Lady Ivy is left’ alone to think. Viva Gaythorpe, an actress, calls to see her. Ivy tells her of her solitude, and the emptiness of her life. They discuss matters. The secretary breaks in on their conversation, and tells Ivy that her father is returning. After he has left the room Viva questions Ivy concerning him. It is arranged that Ivy is to join Viva Gaythorpe to-morrow. The next day Lord Rollesden returns about four o’clock, and inquires for his daughter. He learns that she has gone, leaving no address

CHAPTER II —Continued. Viva said nothing more, but she determined that when the right time came she would warn Ivy against mistaking love of admiration and attention, or oven love of love, for love itself. She knew, and learnt in a hard school, that the two feelings were wide asunder as the poles, but perhaps the time was not yet ripe to hand her knowledge on; and so, with tho best intentions, she left her friend exposed to a great danger—the danger of taking the one for the other. “Good-bye,” she said, and kissed Ivy again. The girl looked up at her with trustful eyes. “To-morrow,” she murmured. And Viva, pleased at tho trust and love she saw, answered “To-morrow.” **■»*# Next day, at four o’clock, Lord Rollesden returned, and Garrett, coming into the hall to meet him, was shocked at what he saw, for the upright ngure was stooping, and tiie still handsome face looked grey, as leaning on tho arm of his valet he almost tottered across the tesselated pavement of the hall towards the library. Tho secretary waited in respectful silence until Lord Rollesden was settled in his arm-chair, and tho valet had left them together. Then he came up to him. “I’m afraid you’re not feeling very well.” “No, my boy, no,” answered Rollesden with greater cordiality than ho usually showed. “I’ve had a bad touch of illness this time—one that 1 shan’t forget for a long time. In my opinion it’s the beginning of the end.” “1 trust not, my Lord; I sincerely trust not.” “Thank you, Garrett; you’re a good fellow, but one must face the music. And anyhow, I’ve got the boys to come after me, that’s one great comfort. Look here,” he added abruptly, there’s another thing that’s been preying on my mind since I came face to face with death. The girl—l haven’t been quite fair to her. Where is she? I should like to see her.” “Lady Ivy? She shall be sent for immediately.” Tho message was given and an answer came back very shortly. It was brief but sinister. “Her ladyship has gone away, leaving no address!” CHAPTER 111. Lord Rollesden grasped the sides of his chair and his face went chalk-white, but his voice showed no trace of the

misgiving with which Garrett saw his soul was filled. “I wish to speak to her,” ho said gruff]}' to the latter, all tho short-lived kindness and affability gone from his voice. “Go and see.” Like an arrow from a bow the secretary flew up tho broad staircase towards Ivy’s sitting-room. His heart was torn with a pang greater than he could have believed possible. So she iiad taken the law into her own hands and carried out her threat, while he, fool that he was, had wasted the precious hours when he might have reasoned and pleaded with her, in a sulky solitude. And now she had done for herself with her father; the look on his face had testified to that. At tho door ho paused and knocked sharply thrice, then receiving no answer, flung the door open and walked in, expecting at least to find a maid who might be terrified into admissions as to her mistress’s whereabouts. Garrett’s gaze fell on an empty room, where packing paper lay untidily about. Cupboards and drawers were open, and through an open door ho could see into her bedroom where wardrobe doors standing open, showed all the signs of a hasty flight. Garrett did not enter that sanctum, for on her writing-table his quick eyes discerned a piece of paper covered with her wnting. He knew that bold, rather sprawling hand, well; had ho not one or two treasured mementoes of it safely locked away—silly school-girl effusions, drawn from her in moments of discouragement, and had ho but known it, thought of now with almost a shrinking distaste. A few steps covered tho distance to the table, and he snatched up tho paper unhesitatingly. Another man might have felt it his duty to take it first to Lord Rollesden, but it was addressed to nobody in particular and began abruptly, as one simply recording a fact, only tho trembling of tho handwriting attested to tho agitation with which it had been written. “I cannot face father’s return, and the recriminations that I know are coming. I hope that no one will follow me, or try to bring me back, as it will be useless. In a few days I shall bo of age, and I intend to take my life into my own hands.— Ivy.” Underneath was a postscript as long as the letter itself: . “1 am going to a woman friend’s, where I shall be perfectly safe, and from where I can begin my work. Later on I will write and tell anyone who may care to hear how I am getting on, but the reason I do not give my address is that I do not want my friend to be troubled. I will make arrangements for letters to be sent to me, and if my father or mother j should be ill and want mo, I will come.” ; Having read this postscript twice, I Garrett deliberately tore it off and walked downstairs again, having hid- 1 den it safely away. Why he had done it he know not, save that in it Jay knowledge of tho girl’s whereabouts, which might mean power. Anyhow, he could produce it at any moment, and declare that tho letter now handed silently to Lord Rollesden had been found in two pieces, and the other portion overlooked. ! Garrett was fond of these small, almost useless, dissimulations; they seemed to give him the influence and power ho was always longing for, and which constantly eluded him. As he handed the letter to his patron, the latter’s face grew dark with anger, and then in a moment tho storm burst, and for an instant Garrett himself stood appalled by it. “Xo wonder Ivy had fled if she had had these kind of scenes to face,” he thought as ho stood outwardly unmoved, while Lord Rollesden thundered on. ( “I take you to witness, Garrett,” he said at length, when, his violence having abated, he leaned back pale and exhausted in his chair, “that I’ve done with that girl for over. Not a word of either myself or her mother, not a hint that she even recognises she has parents i at all simply a calm dismissal of usi

both. Well, there is only one way to meet such insolence, and that is by absolutely ignoring her. 1 shall give orders that if she should come she’s not to ho admitted to the house. And as for her chance of succeeding—a chanco I daresay she’s had well in mind well, some fortune-hunter may snap her up for it, but I don t think ho 11 j ever see the colour of one of my ; sovereigns.” 'i Garrett stood cursing himself for a fool. Why had ho, in a moment of folly, ! and love of mischief, torn off that postscript? It was no part of his plan to turn the father against his daughter, and the lines Ivy had added would undoubtedly have had a softening influence. For a moment he thought of producing it, but it was not as easy as it had seemed to be, and might end in his own dismissal without benefiting anyone; so ho vaguely murmured some commonplace word of pacification. “Your lordship will think differently when you are more composed,” he said. “No, Garrett, I shall not. To tell you the truth, my boy, although I sot so much store by my family, I am not a domestic man. The girl has never been anything to me for her own sake; nor have even my sons, apart from the position they hold as my heirs. Yet I’ve done my duty by them all,” ho added, catching a gleam in Garrett’s eyes, that would seem to point out that the trouble might possibly have originated in this very lack of feeling. “I have given them nothing to complain of; even this girl has had everything she could wish for.” “If you would like me to follow her, Lord Roilosden, and to try and trace her,” began Garrett, “I would do ray best. I couldn’t answer for success, but I would try. And I think,” he added more boldly, “that if you want her back not a moment ought to be lost.” Roilosden looked at him from under bis bushy eyebrows. “I do not want her back,” ho said, “and by no possible combination of circumstances that I can foresee could I ever want her back. From this moment, Garrett, I think wo will not mention Lady Ivy’s name again. I must go up and tell the news to my wife, and then it will be over and done with. I’m sorry if I seemed a little harsh with yon just now,” ho added, looking at the young man not unkindly, “but I’ve had a very groat deal to bear lately, and I suspect, when this consultation of doctors is over, I shall need courage to hear their verdict. Wo are all in the habit of saying that life is uncertain, Garrett; it has become a platitude, hut we don’t really feel it or understand it until, turning some corner in our life’s road later on, wo come face to face with a veiled figure, and we get a feeling that at some time not very distant the veil is going to be lifted for us.” Garrett pulled himself together. “If you have these feeling, Lord Rollesden,” he said almost tremulously, “if you can so nobly, so courageously, face the uncertainty of life, would it not incline you to pardon Lady Ivy? She is very young; she does not know what she’s doing. Should you pardon her she might make a new beginning.” “I thought so myself the other day,” replied Rollesdon, “when I saw her smiling upon Strevolsea at the Court. I felt as if it might be a short way out of all the trouble.” “Strcvelsea ” exclaimed Garrett, losing control of himself for a moment- “ Lord Strevelsea,” said Lord Rollesden, with an emphasis on the title. “He’s one of the best fellows in England. and one of the greatest marriages, and I thought from the first moment they met that the fellow admired her.She would have had but to hold out her little finger, and lie would have followed her like a dog. But that is not Ivy’s way; just because she should have stayed, she has run away. Well, I’m not going to trouble to run after her, that’s all T have to say.” Slowly and laboriously, with the aid of the butler, Rollesden mounted the stairs to his wife’s room, and in answer to a querulous call stepped in at once. Lady Rollesden sat by the fire in a most unbecoming red flannel dressinggown. Her hair was brushed plainly back from a lined and sallow face; her expression was querulous without being ; assertive. It seemed impossible that, she could bo the mother of the beautiful I Ivy. She looked up as Rollesden stumped in, and listened almost sullenly to his account of his seizure. It was as if she saw her role of principal invalid in danger, and if she felt either j love or anxiety showed nothing of either. At length Rollesden, after a swift look at her face, asked her if she could bear a shock. “I can boar anything,” she answered. “Life is so full of unpleasant surprises that as the years go on I have grown accustomed to any misfortune Fate likes to fling at my head.” ’ 1 “Well, Felicia,” ho said, “if you had made more efforts ” A dull red came into her cheeks. “For heaven’s sake, Henry, don’t begin on that tack,” she said. “I had to choose between taking care of myself and fading out of the world altogether. I chose to take care of myself. Life is still sweet, even when it’s bounded by the walls of a sick-room, but if I’d been going about with you to every lighted candle, and grappling with a girl like Ivy, there would soon have been nothing left of me.” “It is of Ivy I want to speak to you. She’s taken the bit between her teeth and left our roof without oven deigning to toll us where she has gone. If you feel faint, Felicia,” he added, “I can call your maid ” , Lady Rollesden dropped a stitch in j her knitting, picked it up again, and tin'll looked up calmly. j “I do not feel in the least faint,”, ■he replied; “nor am 1 even surprised.! Ivy Ims never been like other girls, and' the more one tried to bring her up well, !

the more Bohemian and silly she became. I suppose she’s go llo t° some actress or other—l know sha mot j ' several at Mary Burton’s, and I thought ■ at the time it was very unwise of you ] to let her go on that visit. But to I speak plainly, Henry, I didn’t think it worth agitating myself by making a scene about it. Ivy and I have never got on well together; she’s so exacting, and (hose great eyes of hers seem to bo demanding something I haven’t got i to give her. I assure you that I don’t even know what it was that she did ( want; but it used to make mo so nor- j vous to have her staring at me in the ( way she did, that I more than onco had to aslc her to go out of tho room.” ( Even Lord Rollesden seemed a littb surprised at the want of natural feel- ' ing. Ho looked at her sharply. ’ “Then you are prepared,” he said, “to let the girl go out of our lives altogether, for that is what I intend to do.” | “Well, I suppose we can’t help it until such time as she chooses to come back into them.” “I don’t agree with you,” Felicia,” he said. “This house is not hers to leave when she will, and to come back to when she chooses, and to use as one uses a hotel. If she has friends she prefers to us let them take the responsibility of her life. I have nothing more to do with it.” “Of course, Henry,” said Lady Rollesdon, slowly, “you must do just as you wish. You always do, in any case, only I should be quite sure that you really are acting for tho best, and that I you won’t regret it. As for me, my lino is very simple. I haven’t the health or the strength to cope with tho girl, and if she goes, she goes, and must take the consequences. But if she comes back ” • j “You would receive her with open i arras, I suppose,” interrupted her husband. 1 “I never receive anybody with open arms,” said Lady Rollesden, “and Ivy . thinks mo as hard ns a stone because I don’t enter into all her exalted sentiments. At tho same time, she is my i child, and if the house was altogether ) mine I shouldn’t shut tho door in her i face.” -1 “You will allow, however, that I have 'the right to do so?” r | “Oh. yes, it’s your house,, and I’m i i not going to stand up for her, or make [ any fuss at all about it. Only, Henry, . be sure you don’t regret it. Don’t be ) like the man in the poem who threw a >' pearl away, and then went on his hands ; i and knees to look for it, and cursed t himself because he couldn’t find it.” 1 “So you call this disobedient, runa- • way girl a pearl now, do you?” ) “My dear Henry,” returned Lady , Rollesden, “the value of a thing to us . is just how much we want it.” “Then your precious girl is completely valueless?” | Lady Rollesden knitted on a few . moments in silence, watching her husband. Between these two there was a curious bond of sympathy; they knew t each other’s faults, but had decided to s ’ put up with them, anti her cool, quiet • | disposition soothed his irascible one. j | He waited now in silence for her to > | speak, and at length she did. > “Suppose, Henry,” she said, “that - anything was to happen to the boys.” “Do you mean, suppose we lost - them?” “Well, yes, of course I do.” “Well, we could hardly lose all three, could we?” “It is not likely, but such things have happened.” “Felicia, I’m not going to have you ( I talk like that, but you’ve succeeded iu , | making me nervous. I’ll get the boys J back to-morrow; it doesn’t do to keep • all one’s eggs in one basket.” . | In Lady Rollesden’s pale eyes there ■ lurked a hint of contempt. , I “I wonder,” she said slowly, “if you j ever think of them as our children at 1 all. or only as heirs to your title and i estates.” ' Rollesden was hoisting himself slowly j from his chair. j “You’ve no right to infer that I’ve jno natural feeling,” he said. Ho did , not speak angrily, but there was a hint of anger in his voice, and her eyes drooped before his, also she condescended to exculpate herself to the ; only person in the world to whom she i would have taken that trouble, | “I did not mean to infer anything unpleasant, Henry. I was only wondering.” “Please keep your wonderment to yourself,” ho said, harshly, “or you i will only unnerve mo before tho ordeal I have to go through.” Lady Rollesden said no more. She know that she had offended him, and that if anyone else had said such words to him, ho would have bitterly resented them ; yet when presently ho stumbled from tho room, and she thought over what had passed between them, the i knowledge did not trouble her. Fond as she was of him in her cold way, her | many years of seclusion in that quiet room seemed to have made her spirit remote, as far as all tho vital living interests round her were concerned. She lived only for the daily invalid routine, that made up her life now. Yet underneath all tho selfishness she had been born with tho spirit of fairness, and in her heart of hearts she did not really condemn Ivy. “Wo have never treated her as a girl should He treated,” she thought, with a sudden light, of understanding. “We have had our chance of winning her love, and we have missed it ; perhaps wo shall never have it again.” (To ho Continued.) i