FOR ANOTHER'S SIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7662, 12 June 1886, Page 3 (Supplement)

FOR ANOTHER'S SIN.

~i. BY BERTHA M. CLAY, Author of" A Fair Mystery," " Thrown on the World," " The World Between Them," " Beyond Pardon," &c. ' CHAPTER XXXIV. **1 WOMAN WITHOUT A IT.IEXD, Until with accent of ie„ici Shi? touched upon the past oics corcy As if she dared him to forgot His dream of yore." "Dear Lady Adelaide," said the Duke of Ormnnd, as he took leave of his guests, "1 once had pleasant political relations with your late father-in-law. I delight to renew the old tieu, now, in a private friendship of our families. I entreat for m}' dear young Duchess the friendship of Lady Carew and yourself. My wife is not quite accustomed to English ways." At that very instant Lady Adelaide saw the gorgeously liveried little page of the Duchess slipping a small note into Lord I Carew's hand. She saw, also, Lord Carew for the first time in his life embarrassed. He ! could not reject the note, but he had lived \ in the light of day, like an honest man, and to take this furtive message from a friend's wife, under the very eyes of that friend, and of his own wife—this was a humiliating position, in which it enraged him to be placed. Lady Adelaide thanked Heaven for that burning blush on her lord's face. There was no room for jealousy in her clear soul, for he had never professed to love her, and her heart overflowed in a divine compassion for him, in that he had not only found his lost idol taken from him for another shrine, but might see that idol broken into atoms at his feet and know it clay. This would be agony indeed. What should she feel if she found him, the one love of her pure soul, false to his honest manhood ? He looked at her to see ii she had noticed the incident. She laid her hand on his arm to go to the Carriage, and her soft voice breathed music in his ear, while over her gentle face lay not the slightest shadow of a cloud. Lord Carew was reassured. In her magnificent drawingroom the Duchess of Ormond stood alone, The light of a glittering chandelier poured over her. She was leaning against the black jade pedestal, upon which stood a mocking, laughing marble satyr. In his arms he held a vase, in which grew a cactus covered with crimson bloom ; in the living flame of the open blossoms quivered the creamwhite flosslike stamens, as the Duchess hastily waved to and fro the jewelled fan to cool cheeks heated by anger to as vivid a flame as the cactus bloom.

"I hate his wife!" she panted to herself. " Cold, and calm, and pale *s moonbeams upon snow ! What do men see in those snow-drop beauties to love But no, ha does not love her —he never loved her ; and yet he dared leave me for her ! And he shall leave her for me ! Ho shall come back, and all the world shall see him come. He shall kneel at my feet. She shall pine and mourn, and I will look into her face and smile. Did I not see it in her eyes to-night? She tried to look me through. Those violet eyes, tit only to look love on girls or little children, they looked into my eyes, and said, 'You try to take him away. \ou cannot! He is mine by law!' Law! —what do I care for law ? Be is mine by lore !" Then, swift as lightning flashes and is gene, her fury died away as she heard the Duke's step, and, lifting herself on tiptoe, ■he kissed a scarlet bloom as if it were a sacrament, and looked across the flowers at him with laughing eyes. " Bfc careful, Jaanita !" cried the Duko. "Those flowers are lovely, but they are dangerous with their little tufts of subtle prickles. I wonder they are here—they are unfit for a drawingroom decoration; treacherous and scentless —"'

" But beautiful, Gervase. I like beauty and treachery !" Heaven forbid You do yourself injustice with the speech." She moved into fuller light, away from the flowers. "See, I have broken my fan. I dreamed it was an enemy I had in my grasp, and I crushed it, so." "An enemy? Yon have none. And who Would have thought this little hand so strong ?" «aid the Duke, kissing it. " Never mind the fan. I will choose you the finest fan in London, fit for the most beautiful woman," " Fans are easily found," she laughed. *' Imay break another, dreaming it an enemy. Do you know I could not live without an enemy. They lend flavour to an insipid life." "Nothing is insipid to you, love— an embodiment of youth, and life, and happiness as you nre," he said. "Do you not fancy life now may be insipid?" she demanded. "Think when I was a child our castle was always full of the excitement of conspiracy, of traitors coming and going. One never knew when all the men of the family would be taken away to have their heads off; and under our window at night, plnmed men in cloaks sang love songs to a guitar." The Duke drew her fondly to his heart. " What a life for you, my little dove ! There, go to your rest, and dream not of traitors and enemies, but of your gentle conquest of all hearts that love you." She slid from his clasp, kissed her fingertips to him, and was gone, a bright vision fleeing up to the great stair from the old man's doating eyes. The Duchess of Ormond dismissed her maid, and, too excited to sleep, sank in the luxurious depths of a violet velvet chair. She lifted her eyes. She was opposite a great gold-framed mirror. She faced herself in all her fatal beauty. In her burning, passionate southern home she had passed early from motherless childhood to premature womanhood. Coming orphaned to England, with only beauty for her dowsr, she had fallen into the care of her far-off relative. Lady St. Clair, who daily and deeply impressed upon her that rank, and wealth, and the good things in their train, alone made life worth living. She estimated all admirers who came about her by their titles and their incomes, and would at any hoar have dismissed the most favoured ■nitor for one who in fortune or rank surpassed him. When a dukedom was laid at her feet, she had reached the acme of her ambition, as she could not expect to marry a royal prince. Bad not the softly languishing eyes turned upon him, the tender listening to his every word, half with love, half with reverence, first suggested to the old Duke that it might be possible for him to gain this exquisite young bride and taste again the joys of family, long withered under the touch of death? In Scotland, in that visit of which she now spoke so petulantly, had she not avowed that she loved the cold, the strong, the calm, the mighty ? Had she not said she loved the snows and the mists ? Then, with the slipping of th magic golden oircle on her little, soft hand, and the securing of that ardently desired coronet, a change had come. The fascinating bride grew calm, dignified, reticent, shy, proud yes, cold—and the Duke thought this fitted weil her rank and her new matronly dignity. Bat very soon it seeemed to the Duchess of Ormond that the strawberry leaves were less desirable, and that rank and wealth were things that had always been hers, and were old tales. Lord Carew, in the days of their early love-making, had been admired for his noble presence, desired for his wealth ; he would nave been dismissed in favour of the Duke had he remained at her feet till the Duke appeared. In those days he was but one of many, if the first of all. Now that this serene wife claimed him, Lord Carew and his love became to the artful Duchess the one desirable good. Had Lord Carew elected Juanita and poverty, Juanitaherself would have cried impossible! No man with poverty as his dower would have beon endurable. But now Lord Carew possessed •ne of the first fortunes in England, and forbidden fruit and this daughter of Eve held Out bar hand to him. She wearied of this tola of an old man's darling. She would chain a young man in his pride and prime to the triumphal wheels of her chariot, and he omit be carried captive from the JaWIUI impress of his heart. Thus u across London pealed the hells of St. Paul's, telling that the night was growing from the midnight towards the early summer dawn, lay this .fatal, glowing beauty, unwearied in the velvet cushions of her chair, and planning to entrap and dominate this proud and honest heart, too honest to contend fairly with wiles like hero. And Allan, Lord Carew, tossed wrathful y as a sleepless pillow ; and one moment tola himself all would have been well but for his lather's unjust will, and again execrated the puh And lotely Spaniard for her recklessness,

and then with a gush of admiration forgave her for her beauty. For on Allen's dressingtable lay atoms of what had been this note : Cher ami,—Lifo ha* grown dark and cold to mo, though I serra fry. Yon, I know, c*n pity and help mo. lam a stranger in a strung* land : but once ynu cared for rap, and I—. Meet me to-morrow at the studio of Hons. Leon. Do not fail. Yon shall advise oie how to have my picture taken, also what to do. Nit A. While Allan Carew tossed and curßed his fate, his rejected wife was kneeling in a tiny white boudoir, her own most secret room, -nowy, and sweet, and still as the heart of a white rose. "Oh, Heaven 1" she prayed, "give me a patience long as life. To suffer wrong is [ batter than to sin, and in trying to shield I him from shame and sorrow, forbid that I have betrayed him into evil 1" And out of that steadfast spirit all resentment died, and in a new courage she resolved to do her work to the end and save her husband's imperilled soul. And far away from Belgrave, in a lodging on the Hempstead Road, paced up and down the dark woman who had called Lady St. Clair her enemy. "Such once was I, so dazzling in beauty, so assured in my pride. Oh, life that I have wrecked and wasted ! Oh, years of madness that have followed years of sin ! Now left in all the world without a friend!"

CHAPTER XXXV. "NAY, THE.V, FORBID IT. HKA.VKN 1" HE SAID. Lord Carew, after a troubled night, awoke, The note at once occupied his mind. " How could she !" he cried "Why not speak openly to me! 1 loved her once. Heaven forbid that I should love her now, when she is married to another, and I, too, am bound by fetters none the less to be respected, though iron, not roues. Does she think iam not a man of honour? Does she think mo so base as not to respect the sanctuary rights of that noble old man's home ? But no, she is so young she is Spanish ; she has all her life been motherless ; she needs a friend. She means no harm ; the Duke is old for her ; I may help her to understand him better. I cannot insult her by not going; my refusal may put evil thoughts into her little head. 1 cannot degrade her to herself. Beautiful Nita!"he cried, passionately, a3 the glorious face rose in vision before him. " What would I not do to help you." He went down to breakfast, his heart in a tumult. There he found help in his trouble. Lady Carew was there in her dignified gracious motherhood, to sootho the perturbed soul of her son. And presently Lady Adelaide came in looking simply angelic. No fair lily was ever calmer aud sweeter than that pure, tender face. She bent to receive Lady Carew's warm kiss and then her violet eyes turned on her husband ; tender, serene, unreproachful, they seemed to shed a sudden light on all his troubled way. He spoke hastily. " Mother, you asked me for Adelaide's portrait. lam reminded of it now, as the Duchess told me she is to have hers painted by Monsieur Leon, the new star in portrait painting, who paints only the most beautiful. He never paints where it would be possible to improve on nature, or to flatter." "Then he will delight in painting Adelaide," said Lady Carew. Her daughter-in-law blushed. ' "And the Duchess is to be at Monsieur Leon's studio this morning to arrange for her picture. She would be delighted if we would meet her there. Will you both go?" " I shall enjoy it?'' said Lntfy Carew. " With pleasure, if you wish it," said Lady Adelaide, Lord Carew looked earnestly at her. Did she know of that note the previous evening? Not for worlds would he stand guilty, before those innocent eyes, of carrying on an intrigue, or forgetting the respect demanded by his presence under his roof. So in these months, since his forced marriage, had this unwelcome wife's character grown upon him, that in all the world, hers was the bar where he should most dread to bu condemned, and she unwittingly was the umpire of his most secret thoughts.

Mons. Leon was a painter sprung newly into dazzling fame. A man of about thirty, whose pictures had taken by storm the visitors of the Paris Salon and the galleries of Italy, ho had been persuaded by ardent admirers to come to London, and his studio was thronged with those who came as sitters or purchasers, and with many more, whom, owing to their lack of beauty, he would not be persuaded to paint. "Only beauty," said Mons. Leon, calmly, full of faith in his destiny, "should be immortalised." And yet to immortalise true beauty by his brush on canvas was his joy ; and the artist's soul was lifted to a rare delight when that morning the two moat beautiful women in England, and of types «o different, stood in his studio. When tha door of the anteroom opened, and Mons. Leon's servant announced "Lord Carew," the Duche*3, who was already talking with the painter, turned with a flush of triumph. He had obeyed her call ! Her face darkened, like archangel fallen, when she saw with him bis mother and his wife. But she was too much mistress of herself to betray her chagrin. She stepped forward with her brilliant smile, gave her hand to Lady Car*w, and her most fascinating greeting to Lady Adelaide. To poor Lord Carew, with her hav.ghty head turned a little over her shoulder, she gave a cool, almost disdainful nod, with her brow lifted, and a level glance of restrained rage. "1 have offended her," said Carew, and bisheartsank. His happy scheme of bringing his ladies, looked leas happy each instant. The artist had received the party into the drawingroom. His studio was sacred to two or three at most—a chattering crowd never would be allowed to desecrate that shrine of art. Beauty Randolph, and one or two others were in the drawingroom. No doubt the infatuated Beauty would have incontinently deserted the standard of Lady Adelaide, but the Duchess, who had been ignoring him, suddenly changed her tactics, and cried : "Captain Randolph, it is on you I depend to tell me how my picture shall be painted ! Shall it be in fancy costume or not ?"

"You do me too much honour," cried Beauty, "the question is important." " It is indeed," said Leon, " for this must be a work of supreme art." " I leave it to you and Captain Randolph," said the Duchess. " I had asked a friend, cm whose taste I relied, to meet me here. He has failed me. I shall look to him no more." She spoko so easily that not even Lady Adelaide detected her hidden intention. Lord Carew felt all the sting of her words. "Be painted a3 Cleopatra, your Grace, queen beauty of the Orient world," said Captain Randolph. "As Tennyson has it: " On a flowery rise, One sitting on a crim-on scurf unrolled." Truly you will seem such as— "The Ilus would have risen before his time. And flooded at your nod." "Yes," said Monsieur Leon; "or, with a mantle of purple velvet and ermine, and feeding a white fawn with white roses." "May I speak a suggestion?" asked Lord Carew. "I think not. Too many suggestions weary one," said tho Duchess, coldly. " But, Lady Adelaide, what do you think?" "Dear Duchess," said Lady Adelaide, utterly devoid of envy of another's beauty, " I fool as if you really would look mos'\ beautiful painted exactly as yourself—with your pomegranate blossoms and lace mantilla, the true crowning type of Spanish loveliness." " Decide, now, Monsieur Leon—decide among all these opinions," said the Duchess, iipeiking in Krench, to the artist. The door of an inner room hastily opened, and a little old man, in a velvet cap and brocaded dressing - gown, looked forth eagerly. " That voice 1 that voice ! Who spoke, monfils?" "The Duchess of Ormond, father, said the artist, in a low tone, going with great respect towards the intruder. He did not seem to hear the answer; eagerly through his glasses he was peering at the aristocratic group, and his anxious, trembling tones cried still: " Mon Jils, mon fils, who is that lady J— the dark, beautiful—"

" Mon perc !" said the artist, remonstrant, pressing him gently back. But Lady Adelaide stepped forward, with her peculiar, tender grace. " Monsieur Leon, may I speak to your father ? I recognise him, and I owe him so much ! My dear old master! do you not remember me?—little Adelaide Carlton I was when you taught me French and Italian, and you remember I made you so much trouble, because even my English was mixed with Hindostanee ? It was you who first made study pleasant or possible to me, and without you I should have grown up a sad dunce." She looked towards Lady Carew brightly, who also recognised her young ward's

preceptor, and with true good-breeding, turned to speak to him. The perturbation of the old Frenchman quieted under the gracious influence. "I remember," he said, with a low bow. " Madam was my gracious patroness, who helped a poor exile into competence. In those days I was toiling that my son's groat genius might be properly cultivated. Now I am compensated, and proud that he is an artist second to none." Then his eyes lingered on the wonderful loveliness of Lady Adelaide, and he said tenderly : " The little fair maid who was the sweetest and best of all my pupils, has grown into the lovelist lady in the land. Mon Jils, if this lady is to be painted, it should be as one of the ministering angels who walk God's earth, and make flowers spring up beneath their feet." ! "I should say," replied the artist, somewhat embarrassed at his father's interposition, "as Lady Carew was pleased to say about her Grace, she will be most beautiful painted as herself." The little old Frenchman, with a bow full of courtesy of the old French school, withdrew, and softly closed the door that shut him into the library. "My father has a trouble that makes him nervous and forgetful," said the artist, half-apologetically. "I was glad to see him, and speak to him," said Lady Adelaide, gently. At that instant her eyes fell on the Duchess of Ormond and Monsieur Leon, whose heads happened to be brought into range, as two heads cut upon the same cameo. She fairly caught her breath at the amazing resemblance—both dark, foreign, and supremely beautiful. " May I look at the triptych ?" asked Boauty Randolph, pausing before a small carved and inclosed frame, on the wall. " Pardon me," said Leon ; " it is no work of art. It is a portrait painted from memory by my father, who, with singular artistic taste, had no arl; training. The case is always locked." The gay party went away, the Duchess still freezing Lord Carew with a wronged, indignant scorn ; and all unconscious that the trembling little old French exile held unwittingly the thread of all their lives in his hands.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE MAKKIKD CoQUSTTK. *' Forgot that I remember.i And dream that I forgot." Lord Carew could not banish the memory of those black eyes that had looked such imperial scorn upon him. In fact, the eyes of her Grace of Ormond were wonderfulTo the Duke, less than a year before, they had been the soft, pleading eyes of a child left lonely in the world, half-pleased, half-terri-fied, yet all entreating ; a little later they had been to him the gentle eyes of a maiden waking to the light of love, and finding half her love in reverential admiration of its object. The eyes of the Duchess could be velvet soft, as if drowned in pleasant dreams, and they could flash with sudden tears — tears that never fell, hut glistened like gentle dews across the midnight blackness of those lovely orbs. And how Lord Carew found thoue same eyes could hold scorn, wrath, indignation. In truth, the eyes of the Duchess were thus effective becauso whatever she was at the instant she was wholly and heartilv ; with all her Southern verve she threw herself into the character she was for the time enacting. While she set herself to be wooed by the Duke, she was that simple, beguiling, trusting creature she seemed. Now that she had entered on a more perilous way, would she meet an angel with a drawn sword to check her, or would she go on, and on—to ruin ?

While Lord Carew was thus haunted by the eyes of the lovely Juanita, he took task in a manner even extravagant. He told himself that he had wronged and insulted her by construing a simple careless invitation to a public place as a clandestine meeting, aud had looked upon an innocent girl-woman as an intriguante, and she bad detected his cruel thoughts of her, and would never forgivo him. As a man of chivalry, he desired to make amends. But when he met the lady riding in the park, she turned away her eyes; when he called at her house, she was not at home;" when they met at a ball, her card was full at once for all the dances, and yet, after he had asked her and was denied, she gave dances to others. This was cruel. It seemed to Lord Carew that life was unmeaning unless he had tha innocent friendship of Juanita, Duchess of Ormond. ' A ball was given by the Duchess of Grafton. The Duchess, a woman of immense fortune but very little beauty, had the kindest heart, the most sincere nature, and the most exquisite taste in the world. In all that concerned morals, her Grace of Grafton was most rigid ; like her Queen, she i refused to receive or recognise divorcees ; ! and, in addition to this, she had the most genial interest in young married people, and the thought of differences between them brought a shadow over her good, kind face. To be intimate with the Duchess of Grafton was a mark of honour, and many a daring young debutante restrained her coquettish propensities under the light of the Duchess' grey eyes. The Duchess yearly gave many entertainments, but especially one which crowned the season, and was looked forward to with eagerness, and always pronounced unapproachable. All the elite of London graced the Duuhess' ball that night, and supremo among all shone Adelaide Carew and Juanita of Ormond. Next these two in beauty came the piquant Alice Carr. Lady Carew, the intense desire of whose heart was that her son should love earnestly to love his wife, had superintended with more than a mother's care the toilet of her daughter-in-law. Lady Adelaide wore a marvel of Worth's — a robe of blue silk entirely covered with an open-work tissue of silver. The famous Carew diamonds shimmered on her neck and arms, and at her girdle ; but in her hair she wore only Parma violets and lilies of the ▼alley, while a bouquet of the violets and lilies graced her hand. It was one of her peculiarities always to wear natural flowers, and never to allow any artificial leaves to be mingled with them. "Dear Lady Adelaide!" Alice Carr had cried, " why not have had silver leaves with your violets " Oh, Alice, I love flowers to be all natural."

"Sweet soul! as genuine as yourself," exclaimed Alice, giving her an impulsive kiss. Alice Carr was in rose-coloured brocade and pearls, and with her mother, entered the ballroom in the party of Lady Carew. Beauty Randolph was already there, and true to his fashion, paying his adoration at the shrine of the loveliest. He was in the circle of admirers doing homage to the Duchess of Ormond. When the eye of Lord Carew fell upon the Duchess, he drew a quick breath of delight in her splendid beauty. She was in a superb robe of amber brocade, amber roses in hair, hands, and dress; and her jewels were a singular and daring setting of diamonds in clear amber, devised and ordered by herself for this occasion. She was dazzling, Oriental; and yet, as Lord Carew turned to glance at his wife, her serene beauty seemed as a heavenly rest beside the overpowering Duchess. Even as one fascinated, and compelled against his will, Lord Carew drew near his offended friend. The same scorn in her magnificent glance; even in her figure was indignant reproach. Yet, though she almost humiliated him, he clung to the hope of getting a word or look of reconciliation. "Still unforgiving?" he whispered, as he bent over her hand. "Still outraged by misconception," she retorted, as she turned to the Duke of Grafton, who was foremost among her adorers. In all that great throng the heart of Adelaide Carew was lonely, for her husband alono failed to pay her any honour, and still conferred his evidently unwelcome attention on the Duchess. Beauty Randolph saw it and would have reoklesiily made himself the slave of the neglected wife ; but Adelaide Carew had an innate wisdom far beyond her years. One cavalier she would not monopolise ; neither would she emphasise her husband's desertion by "wearing the willow." Graciously and smilingly, while her soul was sad, she accepted attention from those who crowded about her, and no one dreamed how coldly her heart sank at the thought that her husband had neglected to ask her for a single dance. Nor did her sorrow harden her to others' secret pain. Her tenderly sympathetic soul divined that Alice Carr preferred the attentions of Captain Randolph to all others, and when Beauty, distressed at the pain he alone detected in the violet eyes—-by love's marvellous instinct — would have hung over her chair to the exclusion of everyone else, she looked earnestly up at him, and said, softly : Did we not make a compact at Brook* lauds that I was to be your sister^

" We did," cried Beauty, with iubclued fervour. " Then let me have a sister's privilege. I beg you to leave me and devote tho rest of the evening to dear, lovely Alice." "But you are suffering!" whispered Beauty, recklessly tearing up a rose in his button-hole. •' The heart knows its own bitterness, my adopted brother, and knows best how to heal it. Go—pray go— ask Alice for one of her blush-roses to replace tho red one you have ruined." At this instant, the indignant Lady Carew had drawn near her son, »nd was using her maternal privilege. " Allan, you have not danced once with your wife. You are leaving her, in her wonderful attractiveness, neglected to tho attentions of other men. Since when did the Carews lay themselves open to the public tongue, and light remarks ?" Lord Carew looked up, startled by the smothered bitterness of his mother's tone. Few mothers have, or deserve, such power over a son, as did Lady Carew. Lord Carew saw Beauty turning from Adelaide, and Adelaide left alone with a sudden, lonely look. Had she not entreated him not to bring her into painful publicity—a mark for popular gossip. He hastened to her. She welcomed him with a smile. Though he assured himself that he did not love her, at her Bide all evil influences seemed to die ; he came consciously to his noblest self, and peace enwrapt him. Almost for the rest of the evening, he devoted himself to Adelaide, and the friends of her circle, and as the Duchess saw the pair floating past by her in a dance, so wellmatched in every way, ami the cynosure of all approving eyes, she felt that she must soon forgive Allan Carew, or submit to yield his conquest to his own fair bride. The pair were under the observation of other eyes—those of the Duchess of Grafton and Lady Carow. That is as it should be," the Duchess whispered, they being a little withdrawn in a window. " When I saw him with the others, flying about the blaze of the Duchess of Ormond. i feared his former fancy might be renewed."

"What fancy?" asked Lady Carew, eagerly. Why, you have not forgotten the first season she was out ? Yes, I remember now, it was in your long illness, after your husband's death. Allan was very devoted to her; so were many, but he was the wealthiest, and 1 made sure would be the winner. Then the next season Allan withdrew, or was banished, and the first news was that the Duke of Ormond had fallen deeply in love with the young Spaniard. You should be thankful. Lady Adelaide is perfection. But, as Juanita, Countess de Silvara, aud now as Duchess of Ormond, I think our Spanish beauty too fond of flirting." " I had not heard that my son knew her. He never spoke of her to me ; but, then, I was so ill that no news of sooiety was brought to me, and that winter my dear Adelaide, instead of being introduced, denied herself all pleasures, and devoted herself to me as few daughters would have done. You cannot dream what she was." "No wonder Lord Carew fell in love with such a model of beauty, sweetness, and selfforgetfulnes. Thank Heaven, he is too happily married, as well as too much the man of honour, to be fascinated by this lovely married coquette." [To be continued.]