A RISING STAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9726, 23 January 1895, Page 3

A RISING STAR.

* BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY, • Author of "Bob Martin's Little Girl,""By the Gates of the Sea," " Coals of Fire " ' Cynic Fortune," " The Way of the World," etc. CHAPTER Continued. J Esther had wished for anything rather than this, bub she had no face to resist. The nondescript boy shouting from the flight of stone steps which -lecV to the streeb that the carriage was outside, and Mark leading the way to it, she followed. The brougham was unexceptionable in style, as might have been expected from the wealth and taste of its purchaser. The horses were splendidly groomed and appointed. The coachman and his companion were liveried in solemn splendour. The whole equipage, in fine, was as exquisitely finished as if His Grace of Belisle had intended ib for his own use. The footman opened the door, and when Mark and Esther had entered closed ib behind them, and stood deferentially waiting until the word "home" was given him. " This belongs to you 2" said Mark, turning to look at his companion. She had partly recovered herself by this time, and was prepared with the first lines of the new scene in which she had to play. " Yes," she said, " it's mine. Just think of that! The duke sent ib to me a month ago. Wasn't ib kind of him I think it's lovely. I've been oub in the park in ib lots of times, and I've never seen anything prettier. It's quiet, but ib looks good and rich, doesn't it, Mark?" 1 " " Yes," said Mark, scornfully. Ib looks a great deal too good, and a great deal too rich." . , , "Oh, bub that's like the duke, you know," cried Esther, clapping her little gloved hands together, and turning to him with a bright smile. " He's such a generous man. Oh, he is such a dear old gentleman. I was quite afraid of him at first, because he was a duke ; but I got quite used to him in a day or two, and now he's jusb like a beautiful old fairy godfather." " H» !" said Mark. " 1 shall introduce you to him," Esther went on, " and he'll do lots of things for you, because you're a friend of mine. He'll do anything to please you, Mark, and they say lie's one of the richest men in England. There isn't a theatre in London where he couldn't get a piece on, and I shall tell him how clever you are, and how good you ve been to me, and you'll see. Mark, I m going to make vour fortune." " 1 think not"," said Mark, so frostily that all her pretence of generous gaiety was frozen for the moment. He sank back in a corner, and sab with folded arms, staring blindly out of the window. She had looked so sparkling, so innocent, so infantine in her simplicity, whilst she had spoken of her noble patron and his affection for her, that ho would have been a cynical man indeed who had dared to think her conscious of the peril of her position. "The poor silly child doesn't know, he said, inwardly, to whab misconceptions she is exposing herself." The carriage rolled smoothly along, ana both Esther and Mark kept silence. In due time they reached Limesboroueh Gardens, and entered the bouse together. Mrs. Jordan opened the door at Esthers summons, and met Mark with a face of blank amazement, but, recovering herself in a moment, broke into a conveying welcome. The young man cut her speech short. "I have a greab deal to say to you, Esther. Where can I speak bo you ?" Esther led the way to her own room, and Mark looked mournfully about him there, noting the exquisite decorations of the wall and the costly beauty of the furniture. "Has the Duke of Beliale given you this as well 1" he asked. " Oh, no," said Esther. *' I pay rent for this. Mrs. Jordan i« caretaker of the house, and she lets me this room and the next." " What right has she to let them Mark asked. " You can't afford to pay any reasonable rental here." " I pay a pound a week," Esther returned, panting. " You don't seem half glad to find me well off, Mark." He turned and looked at her with a mourn ful scrutiny. " The house belongs to the Duke of Belisle, of course," he said. " Well, I believe it does," Esther returned, " and 1 don't think if anybody else owned it I could get it half so cheap. I really think, Mark, that he put Mrs. Jordan into the house to take care of ib jusb on purpose that she might lot these rooms to me. Oh, I'm not going to talk to you if you look at me like that! You are cross. I believe your selfish, Mark, and jealous, about my good luck. JSo! I don't mean that, because your the kindest man in the world yourself, aren't you, Mark?" She played upon him with all the artillery of her pretty, innocent, half childish, half womanly ways, bub Mark gloomed at her. with so heartbroken and accusing a look that she was obliged to turn away with a pretence of petulance. " I don'b like you a bib. You're nothing like tho Mark you used to bo." It struck Mark to the heart to suspect for the first time that she was acting. He began to believe in spite of himself thab she know the gravity of his disapproval and was striving to hide her own embarrassment. He tried to draw in the thought as unworthy of himself and her, bub ib clung persistently. "This won't do, Esther," he said after a minute's silence. I must talk to you seriously, and if I say unpleasant things to you you must understand that they are said for your good. You're not a child any longer, and you cannot behave as a child. The Duke of Belisle has no right to offer you anything, and you have no right to accept anything from him. You must send your carriage back to him, and you must leave this house and live in rooms that you can afford to pay for." ■" " Indeed I sha'n'b send the carriage back," said Esther. "My dear," urged Mark, "you're almost too young to understand what mischief you are doing to yourself. If it should get. to be generally known that you are living here, and that you, with your salary, are driving about in a carriage with a coachman and footman you can't guess whab will be thought and said about you." " Whab can anybody say about mo?" she answered. " What can anybody bhink about me ? To hear bhe way you talk, and to see how you look, anybody mighb think I had done something very dreadful." " My dear," cried Mark, "you are too young and inexperienced to understand the position in which you have placed yoursolf. ' The Duke of Belisle is a man from whom no really good and modest woman would accept anything." "Mark!" cried Esther, flushing to the roots of her hair, " do you mean to say that I am nob good and modest? How dare you Oh ! nobody ever dared to say such a thing as thab to me before." And with thab she dropped into a chair and began to cry. „ " I have said nothing of tho sorb, dear, said Mark, trying in vain to soothe her. " I have not thought anything of the sort. Your youth and inexperience are your excuses. Everybody who knows the world will tell you thab whab you. are doing is destroying your own character. I love you too well to let you do that. He . spoke sternly and coldly, bub his heart was like ice and fire in one within him. " You must send back whatever the duke has given you, and you must accepb nothing more from him." "IshaVfc do anything of the sorb," she flashed at him through her tears. " You're a nasty, horrid thing, Mark, and I hate you 1 What have I done to be talked to like this ? Oh ! what I have done ?" "The child doesn't know," Mark mused, and stood looking down at her, feeling altogether desperate and enraged. "My dear, you've gob to listen and to understand.* It's very dreadful to have to bell you, bub you are in a dreadful position. If you stay here no good woman will have a word to say to you. You will ruin your whole future, and you will cover yourself with & terrible suspicion. You are too young and too ignorant of the world to know what you are doing ; bub the Duke of Belisle, who you are so simple as to think is your friend, could tell you well enough what his friendship is doing for you." " He is my friend !" sobbed Esther., " A better friend than ever you were." _ " He is your bitterest enemy," Mark de clared, Bbarmily. "Ha has ruined score

of girls as innocent and unsuspicious as yourself. The hoary old infamy ! There is no greater scoundrel living- at this hour in England than the Duke of Belisle !" y

' '* Indeed, sir!" said a smooth voice behind him, and Mark wheeling swiftly round saw in the doorway an old gentleman, scrupulously dressed and groomed. The old gentleman wore an eye-glass with a black ribbon, and showed a lovely set of white teeth in a formal smile. His hair and his little bits of side-whisker were venerably white, and his head doddered with a movement of incipient palsy. He had half drawn off the glove from his right hand, and stood arrested in that, action, stooping slightly forward as if in acknowledgment of a courtesy. "I have nob the honour of your acquaintance, sir," he said, " but you use my name with some freedom." CHAPTER XVI. Mark had experienced a warm glow of virtuous indignation whilst he denounced the duke, and even now he felt that he was strongly armed in honesty, bub for all this he was taken utterly aback, and both looked and felt foolish in the unexpected presence of the man he had assailed. "You are the Duke of Belisle, sir?" he stammered.

"I am the Duke of Belisle," the old gentleman responded with great simplicity. "I do not think I have the pleasure to know you, sir." He was perfectly at ease and suave in manner, ana so completely contemptuous of his assailant that he did not even look contempt or seek to express it in the bone of hts voice.

" My name is Stanley," said the young dramatist""" Mark Stanley. Until a few weeks ago I was this child's guardian." He was v.aken by surprise, and spoke -haltingly. He had not formed to himself any definite idea of what the Duko of Belisle would look like, and this stately and self-possessed old man, with his title and splendid fortune behind him, was a little terrible. Mark was a plebeian pure and simple, the son of a rustic shopkeeper, and owed all his education and his social training to himself. He had spoken to an Irish viscount once, and bhere his knowledge of bhe aristocracy of these kingdoms began and ended. He was not cowed, bub he was taken ab a disadvantage, and for the moment he was overawed. The chances are thab if he had spoken of a social equal in such terms as ho had applied to the duke, and had been challenged at the moment of their utterance, he would have felb an almost equal embarrassment. " Thank you, Mr. Stanley," said the duke, moving a little to one side, and pressing the button of an electric bell. "That will do. One of my servants will show you to the door." He was smiling still, arid wore an unchangeable look of courtesy and self-possession. "I beg your pardon, sir," said Mark, partly recovering himself. " I must decline to leave your house at present. I must ask you to listen to me. If you are a man at all, and if you have a man's heart, I may perhaps persuade you to let this deluded child go away from here." "My dear sir," *aid the duke, seating himself and removing his gloves. "I was a man once—say a century ago—who would havesresented with some warmth the terms in which you have seen fit to describe me. I cannot at this time of day afford myself the pleasure of throwing yoa through the window, or of kicking you downstairs, and I believe there is no male domestic in the house. lam a very old man, and am naturally at your mercy" For the moment only—you understand, Mr. Stanley."

" Your grace cannot fail to know," said Mark, trembling from a mixture of emotions, "/that this child is greatly compromised by your association with her." " Come in !" said the duke, in answer to a rap from outside. '»Show this gentleman out." Tho white eye-browed, pink-eyed, page boy stood rigid at the door. "Not yet," said Mark, with all the selfcontrol he could command. "I have something to say to your grace before I go." "Very well," said his grace, uninterestedly. "You may go, Cheston ; you may go." The page boy withdrew, closing the door noiselessly behind him. The Duke of Belisle was in no hurry to relievo Mark of his embarrassment. He showed this plainly by rising and walking to the window ; there he turned his back upon his unwelcome visitor. Esther was in such an extremity of fear that she had ceased to cry, bub looked from one to the other with clasped hands and tear-stained face. Her aspect was so piteous that Mark stooped to lay an assuring hand upon her shoulder, and whispered to her not to be afraid.

"I was saying, sir," he began, bub the duke offering no sign of any knowledge of his existence he stopped short for a moment. " I was saying, sir, thab you cannot fail to know what damage you are inflicting on this poor child's reputation. That is very little to you, I- have no doubt, but ib is much to her, and much to me. She ran away from her old: protectors thoughtlessly, in some mere childish pique. She is clever and has ib in her power, with tho help of her friends, to make a reputation for herself."

The duke walked to tho bookshelf, took down a tiny volume in white and gold, opened its pages 'at random, sat down, and began to read with every appearance of tranquillity. " You have no right," said Mark, confused and heated by the other's coldness— " you have no right to imperil her future. You have no right to smirch her reputation."

The duke turned over the leaves of the dainty little volume he held, found a new passage, and yawned over it ever so little, as if it bored him. As for any token he gave of Mark's presence, the young man might have been in another hemisphere or in another planet. You shall hoar me, sir," cried Mark, raising his voice. " I suffer from some of the infirmities of age, Mr. Stanley," said the duke, but doafness is not one of them."

"You shall listen to me," said Mark. " You shall listen to whab I have bo say. Leave the room, Esther." Half to his surprise the girl obeyed him. " Now, sir, ib is my duty to speak plainly." " You seem to think so, Mr. Stanley," said the duke. " I shall ask you to be as brief as possible."

" This child—for she is still no more than a child—was in my care for years. What education she has had I have given her. Whab hopes of honesb advancement in the world she has she owes to me. You know well enough that her association with you can only lead to ruin. She has not been used to luxury, and for years to come her own talents can find her nothing like this. Sbe is acquiring tastes which she cannot gratify, she is earning a reputation, which I am certain in my soul she doas nob deserve, she is being unfitted for the hard rubs of life "

"My good sir," said the duke, waving an impatient hand against him, " suppose all this said. Suppose everything understood. The theme is nob novel, and your eloquence adds no charm to it. You waste yourself on me, Mr. Stanley. Persuade the young lady, if you can, bhab it is worth her while to resign the advantages of her present position. You will find me perfectly acquiescent." " She is too much a child to understand the gravity of her position," the young man answered boldly. " You understand ib 'perfectly, and so do I. When your whim is over you would throw the child aside as you have done scores of others, and leave her soured and embittered, if nothing worse, to face poverty and labour after this life of enervating luxury." ' " You fatigue me, Mr. Stanley," said the duke.

"You're an old man, sir," Mark began again— "That," interjected his grace, "is the one fact to which you owe your present immunity." Bis manner was quite amiable and smiling through ib all, and Mark felb a sense of impotent exasperation before him. This gave way on a sudden to a feeling of contemptuous anger. "If you were younger, sir," he said, "I might use more freedom." You are old, and unless all men are liars you have lived a shameless, shameful, baneful life from your youth up. If your own grey hairs make no appeal to you I am not likely to touch you very deeply. You have brought a greab name into contempt, you have been a roue to the whole world's knowledge for half a century, and now you're a senile laughingstock. If that place in the world's esteem is worth retaining-."

" You're an ill-bred ruffian !" cried the duke, for Mark had found the one arrow to pierce the armour of his indifference, and he rose to his feet suddenly livid, and shaking with rage.

"Leave this house instantly or I will give you into custody."

On what charge, sir 1" Mark asked, with a savage derision. " The public investigation of our differences in » police court might be agreeable to neither of us, but I assure your grace that IJshall make no effort to avoid it." • The duke sab, down with shaking hands, the incipient palsy with which his head nodded on his shoulders was accentuated, as his face was ghastly pale.

[To be continued on Saturday next.]