WHO WINS?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9497, 28 April 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHO WINS?

BV MAY AGNES FLEMING, i-n,nr "L»dy Evelyn; or, The Lord of Royal Best," "Magdalen's Vow," "The Unseen ' Bridegroom," " The Heiress of Glen Gower," " Estella's.Husband," etc., etc. ';' , \ I CHAPTER XV.— {Continued.)}■(GWENDOLINE was here to-day," Sybil said ; (•poor, dear Gwen! Mrs. Ingram will be her death, and she told me you were at L'hudleich Chase last night. You met Mrs. Ingram; and >' ou like her » of coarse?" <<I don't perceive the 'of course.' Yes, I met Mrs. Ingram (she chose rather an aristocratic cognomen this time), and I recognised a woman I knew fifteen years jico," P " Then her name is not Ingram, and she ;« an adventuress !" Sybil cried. ** I thought so! I thought so» I never believed in her from the first." " Yes, Miss Trevanion, she is an adventuress one who should never sleep under the same roof or eat at the same table with you. A bad, bold woman ; a dangerous woman, an unscrupulous woman, and a deadly foe. Your mother brought her here; where did her ladyship find her ?" "In Scotland, at Strathbane Castle. She was companion to the duchess ; and when her grace died she came to mamma. It was at Baden or Homburg—some one of the German bads—that the duchess met her '• a most likely place. Now, Miss Trevanion, if you will nob think me impertineatly inquisitive, I should like to hear all the story of General Trevanion s mysterious disappearance. 1 heard your mother once hint that, in some way, you blamed Mrs. Ingram. Up to the present I have heard but a very garbled account of that disappearance. I was absent from Speckhaven at the time ib occurred. If Mrs. Ingram had any motive in making away with the General, Mrs. Ingram would no more hesitate over the deed than would Lucrezia Borgia. Will you tell me the Story of that night?" " "Most willingly. But, Mr. Macgregor, really you are enough to make one's blood run cold. Surely Mrs. Ingram cannot be the fiendes3 you paint her ! And then there was no motive—there could be none. .And, besides— Oh, Mr. Macgregor, it is the darkest and most impenetrable of mysteries ! How could she, one weak woman, make away with General Trevanion ? If the earth had opened and swallowed him he :ould not have vanished more completely/' " I should like to examine the room in which ho laythe Adam and Eve,' was ib not ? I will examine the room. And Mrs. Ingram was alone with your patient all that night?'' "By no means. Mrs. Telfer was in the chamber with her; Cleanta in the dressingroom adjoining. But they both slept so soundly that —Heaven forgive me ! —I have sometimes fancied they may have been drugged. I had gone to ray apartment, and, weary with watching, had fallen soundly asleep. Precisely at midnight I woke by hearing, or fancying I heard, a bell tolling." "Ah!" Macgregor said, "the ghostly bell of the Trevanions ! And. then ?"

"I was silly and superstitious, I suppose —nervous, certainly. I got up, threw on my dressing-gown, and hastened to the sick roam. Cleante and Mrs. Telfer were asleep, as I said, and Mrs. Ingram was bending over the bed, where my uncle lay in deep stupor, searching, as I imagined, under the pillow for the will." " The will! What will ?" " A will he had made a day or two before -a will that left all his fortune, as it should have been left, to his ouly son. He kept it under his pillow, and I at first imagined she was trying to find it. But that, of course, was absurd. What earthly use waa the will to her ? Before I could speak, to my horror, the sick man sat up in bed, and grasped her by the wrist, crying out to take her away, she was trying to murder him. He fell back, with the words on his lips, in dull stupor once more, and Mrs. Ingram turned round and saw me." ■"ies! Well?" He was vividly interested, you could see. "Mrs. Ingram looked startled for an fustaof, and very, very pale but she was herself again directly. She explained that die was settling the pillows, and that he had been resting quietly all along. I wished to remain—ah, would to Heaven that I had bub she would not listen to me. She insisted upon my going back. She was not in the least tired or sleepy ; she would watch until morning. 1 let her overrule me. I went back, and again slept, and slept soundly. It was late when I awoke and went back to the sick room. The valet and housekeeper still slumbered, and this time Mrs. Ingram also. And the bed was empty—the will and the dying man gone ! My scream awoke Cleante and Teller ac once, bub not Mrs. Ingram. " When she did awake, after a sound shaking, she was utterly bewildered— could tell nothing. She had dropped asleep, unconsciously—her patient was all sate in bed the last she remembered. She knew no more." Macgregor listened in silence, his brows drawn) a look of dark intensity in his face. " You have heard of the search that was made," Sybil continued ; " long and thorough, and in vain. The secret of Monkswood Was'te is its secret still—well kept. I know nothing against Mrs. Ingram. Common sense in every way proves it to be an absurdity that she can in any manner be implicated. And yet — Oh, Mr. Macgregor, help me if you can ! Fathom this terrible mystery, and I will thank you for ever ! I thought when Cyril came— Bub Cyril has come, and what does he care? The woman who slept on ber post, by bis father's dying bed, holds him fettered, body and soul. He has no thought, by night or by day, bub for ber!'' The passionate, impetuous tear 3 started to her eyes. She turned away proudly, le3t he should see. Bub Macgregor's dark eyes saw most things, and his face clouded a little now. "And do you care?" he asked in a deep, intense voice, " whom he loves or whom no bates ? Can it signify to Miss Trevanion ?" The question might have been insolent on any other lips, and haughty Sybil might have turned upon him in amazed anger. But, somehow—ah! who knows why?—it was Macgregor who spoke ; and the delicate face drooped away, and the lovely, transient glow arose and faded, and the haughty heart fluttered under her sable :orsuge. "No," she said, " it is nothing to me— less than nothing ! Bub I loved my uncle very dearly, Mr. Macgregor, and Cyril is his son. Once I loved him, too—long ago -a little child of four—when he was, oh, so different ! He gave me this ring. I have worn it for his sake for fifteen years. I will never wear it again !" She drew ib off. There was a sparkle of light; then it was flung impetuously into the depths of the pond, a glittering morsel for pike and perch. " Let the waters take it," she said, " less faithless than he ! And you promise me, Mr. Macgregor, you will do your best to help ire in this dreadful darkness which shrouds the poor General's fate ?" "I promise, Miss Trevanion. I will do my utmost, and succeed, if I can, where the best detective of Scotland Yard failed. The mystery of Monkswood will be a mystery no longer, if mortal man can solve it. 1 will do my best, 1 premise.'"' He held out his hand. He had long, slim feet and hands—intensely patrician— Sybil laid her delicate rose-leaf palm therein, with still another rosea.be blush. It was r iuite a new trick on Sybil's part—this flushing— and became her beautifully. "How kind it is of you!" she said, grateful tears standing in her eyes. She seemed so utterly alone, poor child, in her anxiety, and this matter was so very near nw heart. "They say,, Mr. Macgregor, a 'i authors are more or less like their works; bub you are nob in the least like yours !"

' ( ' ( Nicer, I hope 2" the author suggested. "Ever so much nicer !" the young lady answered, saucily. "I don't half like your tone in print; and the sneering, sarcastic, bitterly cynical way you speak of women 5s simply false and detestable. You may say what you please, sir—you and the rest of l,le cold-blooded cynics—but there are Women alive— of them—true and wnner and faithful, and good to the core." , How beautiful she looked ; the cheeks brightly flushed, the violet eyes flashing,

the proud little head thrown back. Ah, Angus Macgrogor, your cynical heart needs a triple coraolet of steel to ward off the blind god's arrows shot from those killing eyes of blue '■ ■ ■ ii " J. believe it now," he s{d » very quietly * did nob before. I spoke of women as I found them. I can never speak of them like that again." , .And then he lifted the fair white hand to his hpsand kissed it, and let ib fall. And the dinner bell rang, and Charley's serene face appeared suddenly through the hazel bushes skirting the fish-pond near. ■■ 11 Are you two flirting or fighting? You look tremendously in earnest; and really, how one is to be in earnest about anything, with the thermometer at boiling heatLet s go to dinner." ' The effort of speaking had exhausted mm ; he was unable to finish his own sentence. They went to dinner, where my lady greeted them, and did the most of the talking. For the heat had wilted Charley, and left him nothing on earth to say ; and Sybil, in a "tremor of sweet blisses," falling fatally in love, though she did not know it, eat something—who knows what and hardly looked across once at the dark tenant of the Retreat. Lady, Lemox and Mr. Macgregor sab down in the lamplit drawing-room to their eternal whist; and my lady made a good thing out of the author's preoccupation, and won two or three handfuls of shillings. And Sybil, away in a corner where the piano stood, and the lamplight never came, played dreamy improvisations, with a quiet, tender happiness in her face. The moonlight fell on the graceful, girlish figure, the stately little, head the delicate, perfect profile, and the author's eyes wandered often from the cards to that fairy vision. It was late when he went away, and Sybil said good-night with a shy grace all new, and " boauty's bright transient glow " coming and going in her exquisite face. It was late when ho left, late when he reached the Retreat, his pretty home, hidden as the covert of a stag amid the towering elms and beeches; but not too late for working and smoking, it appeared. He threw off his dress-coat, lighted a cigar, drew a pile of MtiS. before him, and sat down to write, and while the summer night wore on, he smoked and he wrote, the pen scrawling at a railroad pace over the paper, the only stoppages when he paused to ignite a fresh Havana. The rosy glimmer of the new day was lighting the East when he pushed the MSS. from him and arose.

"Four o'clock," he said. Time for a constitutional under the trees, before coffee and turning in." He pub on bis shooting-jacket and went out. The early August morning, down there in the heart of Monkswood, was inexpressibly peaceful and still. The dew glittered on grass and fern, the soaring larks burst forth in their matin psalms, the air was sweet with its freshness and woodland perfume, and the stillness of some primeval wilderness reigned. The author turned in the Prior's Walk— the grand old avenue where so often the hunted monks had paced, telling their beads. He had sauntered about half-way down, when he suddenly stopped and drew back, for at the other opening a man and a woman stood, where, at that hour, he would have looked for no one—where, at any hour, few ever came. They were standing very still, talking very earnestly, and in the man, tall, dark, and muscular, he recognised at first glance Cyril Trevanion. But the woman—who was she? Surely not the widow ? No. She turned her face toward him even as the thought crossed his mind, and self-possessed as Macgregor was, he barely repressed an exclamation of amazement as his eyes fell upon her face. [To be continued on Wednesday next.]