WHO WINS?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9455, 10 March 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHO WINS?

BY MAY AGNES FLEMING, Author of " Lady Evelyn; or, The Lord of Roya Best," "Magdalen's Vow," "The Unseen Bridegroom," "The Heiress of Glen Gower," " Estella's Husband," etc., etc.

CHAPTER VII.

"LA PRINCESSES ANION." "Ani» after fifteen years of absence — fifteen years of board-school, of sunny France and Italy—ib is home again to dear old Trovanion, to reign mistress of an inheritance to which I possess nob the shadow of right. Oh, Cyril! hero of my childhood, dream of my life, will you ever return to claim your own—those broad acres which I would so gladly resign, your long-lost birthright ? Where, Teary wanderer that he is, where in all tho wide earb h ie Cyril Trevanion to day ?'

She leaned against the casement, and the violet eyes that gazed over the wide expanse of pleasaunco, of swelling meadow, of deep, dark woodland, of velveb lawn, filled with slow tears. A beautiful girl of nineteen, tall, stately, and delicate as a young queen; tho graceful figure, with its indescribable high-bred, air, the small head held erect, with a hauteur that was as unconscious as it was becoming ; almond eyes of deepest violet, that could soften or lighten, melt or Hash, as you willed ib, in the same instant; and waves and masses of rich, dark-brown hair, some warmer shade of bl&ck, word; in coils and curls in a gracefully negligent way thab of itself might have bewitched you. . A beautiful girl, a trills proud of her long lineage, the sang azure, in her patrician veins, it may be. A trifle imperious and passionate in the assertion of her rights, or the wrongs of others, bub sweat and true and tender to the coro of her heart. Romantic too, as ib is in the nature of nineteen to be ; giving to dreaming over Tennyson, and Alfred do Musset, and Owen Meredith, and gentlemen of that ilk; a hero-worshipper and a dreamer of dreams, all beautiful, and impracticable. That) was Sybil. Lemox Trovanion—impetuous, high-spirited, hightempered, maybe, at times; fearless and and free, and lovely as your dreams of the angels. She was General Trevanion'a legally adopted daughter and heiress now, bearing his name and destined to reign mistress ovev all these fertile acres of the Trevanior<B.

In the Parisian boarding school where she had been "finished," the gay little pemoinnaires had dubbed the haughty English girl " La Princesse," and the name became her well. Bub no fawn of the forest wan ever genbler, ever more yielding, than proud "La Princesse" to those whom she lovod; and, like a true Trevanion, she could love or hate with a terrible intensity of strength. She stood now in the recess of a deep Maltese window, wreathed with roses and honeysuckle and all things sweet—an exquisite picture in an exquisite frame. The rich June sunshine glowed in the deep red hearts of those fragrant roses, and sent shafts of fire athwart the brownish blackness of the girl's splendid hair. The white muslin robe she wore, with its rosy ribbons, fluttered in the faint, soft wind. She was neither a pronounced brunette nor blonde. She wore pink, and looked lovely; she wore blue, and looked lovelier still, wear what she might, she must ever be beautiful and thoroughbred; do what she would, she must be queenly. If you found her sweeping a crossing for pennies, and she flashed you the light of those glorious eyes, you would have bated your breath and passed on, and left her " La Princesse" still. She was quite alone, save for a frisky little Italian greyhound and a big, majestic Newfoundland, stretched at full length near, and looking up ab her with great, lazy, loving eyes. As she stood in a dreamy reverie of tho hero of her life —the " Count Lara" exiled from his father's halls—Cyril Trovanion—she espied a slender young man, dusty and travel-stained, sauntering slowly up to the house, smoking languidly as he walked. One glance, and the young lady went hastily forward to meet him. " It is Charley !" she said, aloud. "Come, Cyril," to , tho stately Newfoundland; " come, Sybil," to the frißky little Italian, "here is your old tormentor, brother Charley." She tripped away down the linden walk and encountered the languid traveller under the trees. He was her only brother, two years her junior, and jusb free from Eton. The resemblance between them was very marked as far as looks went. Charles Lemox was singularly handsome, and as vain of his almond-shaped eyes and slender feet and hands as any reigning belle bub there all resemblance ended. " Dolce far niente" was the motto by which Master Charles regulated the lazy tenor of his life. "How do, Sybil ?" Charley said, languidly, throwing away his cheroot, and permitting himself to be impetuously kissed, with a gentle sigh of resignation. " Happy to see you again, and looking so very nicely, too. Surrounded by puppies big and littlo, as usual., I see—four-legged ones. Really, my beautiful sister, doing Ahe grand agrees with i you. You are as rosy as a milkmaid. And how's the governor ?" "Doa'b be irreverent, Charley," Sybil answered, pulling his ear. "Poor dear uncles isi no better— worse, I fear, if anything. But then, he expected it. His physicians all agreed that to return to England was certain death. Still,' he would com e—his heart was set on it. ' What does it matter,' he answered them, impatiently, ' whether I die this month or next ? Sybil, take me home,' and so here we are." " Eminently characteristic," Charley said in his slow, drawling voice. " Stubbornness, I believe, is one of the many agreeable • traits of the Trevanions. The best of them will die before they yield an inch. Don 6 catch tho distemper, if you can, bybil; there's nothing in life worth that tremendous earnestness, and itmusb be so very fatiguing You have a look in your face now sometimes that reminds me of those determmealooking Ediths and Alices in farthingales and diamond stomachers over there in the old hall at Monkswood. By the bye, are the family portraits left to go to the dogs with the rest ?" - , ... : . , .... " Yes," Sybil answered, with a sigh, "it is all desolation at Monkswood Waste. The woodland is as wild as some American forest, the ivy trails desolately over every- j thing, and moth and mildew, the wind and i tho rats, have the gcapd, semantic-old 1

house all to themselves. There is no living thine there—not even a watch-dog—and General Trevanion will not-hear its name mentioned, the dear old manor in whioh hundreds of his race have lived and died." "Ah !" Charley said, listening to this impassioned outburst with serene calm, "that unfortunate constitutional stubbornness again. Here we aro at the house. My dear Sybil, permit me to sit down, and be good enough to ring for seltzer and sherry. The journey from London and the walk from the park gates yonder have really completely knocked me up." "And mamma?" Sybil said, obeying his behest, "when does she come to Trevanion ?"

" Much sooner than is agreeable to her only son. I am mamma's avani courier. She comes before the end of the week,, and Mrs. Ingram with her." " Mrs. Ingram ! Who is she ?" "Ah ! I forgot— dou'b know, of course. Mrs. Ingram is Lady Lenox's bosom friend—a gushing widow of five-and-twenty— one may venture to speak of a lady's age. She's very pretty, very petite, ■ very good style; is past-mistress of the art of putting on a Jouvin kid and tying her bonnet-strings ; waltzes like a French fairy, sings better tlw; Malibran, has the whitest teeth I ever s,.*v outside of a dentist's showcase- and a chevelure of inky blackness, that would make any hairdresser's fortune. She reads to my lady, writes her notes, sings her asleep, and attends to the comforts of her pet pugs and poodles. They met in the Highlands last year, and were struck with a sudden and great love for each other, after the fashion of womankind. The little widow was companion, then, to the worst-tempered old woman in the three kingdoms, her grace, the Duchess of Strathbane, and after putting up with her for two years, you will own, Sybil, she can be but one remove from an angel. The duchess went to glory, up there at Strathbane Castle, and Lady Lemox pounced upon la petite. They have been female Siamese twins since—Orestes and Pylacles in petticoats. Where my lady goes, the widow goes—her country is the widow's country— where she dies, the widow -a Ml die. Isn't that Scripture; or something, Sybil? It sounds like it. Ah. thank Heaven ' Here is the seltzer and sherry and I am really so parched from excessive talking that— me the glass, my dear"— the little waitress —"it must be that garrulity so infectious, Sybil, and that I catch the disorder from you. I'm not like this upon ordinary occasions. I find converation rather a bore than otherwise; but when I come to Trevaniou, I beat all the gossiping dowagers I ever met." Sybil laughed. " You do talk, Charley, and as much nonsense as ever. Well, if your Mrs. Ingram is agreeable and amuses mamma, I shall be very happy to welcome her to Trevanion."

"Don't call her my Mrs. Ingram," Charley remonstrated, plaintively. " She isn't. I would have kissed her when I came away, but she declined. She's one of the intensely proper sorb, you perceive. As though," said Charley, still more plaintively, "a seraph might nob embrace me, and come to no harm by it." "Charley, don't be absurd ! I spend the evening at CLadleigh. Suppose you come." "Thanksnotoo much trouble And it's so dreafully exhausting to watch that girl, Gwendoline. I hate girls that bounce, and bang doors, and makes eyes at a fellow. She's jolly, I admit, and sings ' The Pretty Little Ratcatcher's Daughter' to perfection ; but— By the bye, Sybil, I met a cousin of hers, a gallant major in the cavalry branch of the service, deer-stalking last autumn at Strathbane. He came up with Lord Angus—home from the Crimea, with his blushing honours thick upon him and he told me lobs aboub your demi-god Cyril Trovanion." " Oh, Charly !" with a little gasp. "And you never told me before !" Don't be reproachful, my dear. You can expect everyone to dream by night and muse by day on the lost heir of Monkswood. No, I never told you before, because I hate writing long letters, and ib would have taken a ream at least of best Bath laid to have satisfied you on that subject. And then there is really nothing to bell bub what you bake for granted, and the Times has told you already. He came down like the wolf to the fold, dealing death and destruction to Sikhs and Sepoys, and Woe to the turban upon which his sabre descended. They made him a captain out in India, a major before the walls of Sebastopol, and a colonel when he rode with the Six Hundred up the heights of Balaklava. It really turned me uncomfortably warm to hear Major Powerscourt talk about him, he grew so terribly enthusiastic. He gob a bullet in the hip and a sabre-cub across the face, and no end of unpleasant things of that sorb. So don't heave away your young affections upon him, my hero-worshipping Bister. He must be ugly as a Hindoo idol by this time." Bub Sybil's delicate cheeks were flushed, and the" great, deep eyes flashing through unshed tears.

" I knew it!" she said under her breath —" 1 knew it ! The Trevanions were ever ' without fear and without reproach.' And to think that —that I, a useless, good-for-nothing girl, should usurp his rightsshould reign where he ought to be king ! Oh, Charley, I hate myself when I think of ib!"

"Do you indeed?" said Charlie, politely struggling with a yawn. "Very likely. You are always absurd. Bub could you intimate as much quietly? It is rather preposterous in General Trevanton making you hie heiress, while I am to the fore ; but these old antediluvians are always blinder than bats. As bo your Chevalier Bayard, he may be without fear; but he certainly is nob without the other thing. He ran away at nineteen with a ballet-dancer. STou know thab story. Good Heaven!" exclaimed the Etonian, growing almost excited, " what an inconceivable donkey he must have been! The idea of any fellow taking a wife at nineteen, though she were a princess royal ! Don't fall in love with a married man, Sybil, and don'b flash the light of your angry eyes upon me for suggesting it. I'm your only brother, and it's my duty to improve your morals. Besides, you'll never see him. He's gone to Spanish America."

Sybil's face, almost inspired whilst she listened to Cyril Tre van ion's praise, fell and clouded suddenly. "Did Major— the name— you that, too I" "Thab, and no end besides—l don't remember half. He's gone to South America, however; and very likely civil wars, or tropical fevers, or earthquakes, or some of the other delightful things in style out there, have sent him toes up long ago. At least, I hope so for my own sake—ib will be so nice by-and-by, when you come into the property, and can pay off a fellow's debts, and keep him in unlimited small change. Please don't burst out indignantly, Sybil, as I see you are aboub to do," Charley concluded, deprecatingly, getting up. "I'm exhausted already, and I really couldn't stand it. What time do you dine in this primeval wigwam ? Like George the Third, I dare say, at one o'clock, upon boiled mutton and turnips."

" We dine ab seven, when General Trevanion ia able to leave his room. He will not come down to-day, and I am going to Chudleigh's Chase; so unless yon accompany me" " ' Oh, Solitude, where Sure thy charms?' Yes, I'll go, Sybil. Anything is better than a lonely knife and fork and plate—an oasis in a vast desert of dining-table. 111 go to Chudleigh's Chase, ray Sybil, and face that terrible Gwendoline, in her violent pink dresses, her bouncing and her banging, and all the cut and dried platitudes of thab old stick, Sir Rupert, rather than impair my temper and digestion by dining mournfully alone. I suppose to-morrow will be time enough to pay my respects to the lord of the manor ? One can'b endure too much in one day. Farewell !"

With which the Etonian strolled away, and left his sister alone in the sunlib, rosewreathed window.

"Gone to Spanish America!" she thought. ." Will he ever come back ? Will he ever know that his memory and his image are dearer to Sybil Lemox. than any living man can ever be! I remember that last night at the gate— he, I wonder ? —when he kissed me, a little child of four, under the oaks at Monkswood, and bid me wear this ring for his sake." A solitaire diamond glittered on the third finger of her left hand, the, only , ring she wore. , "Except my mother and Charley, I have kissed no one since. .My hero! my brave lion? hearted Cyril! If he would only come back and take all! II I could only see him safe and happy once more, I would have nothing left on earth to wish for." , , ' [To be continued on Wednesday next-)