SAINTS IN SOCIETY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13084, 25 January 1906, Page 3

SAINTS IN SOCIETY.

[PUBLISHED B1 SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.]

BY MARGARET BAILLIE-SAUNDERS, Prize-winner in Mr. T. Fisher Unwin's First- Novel Competition. [COPYRIGHT.] PART I. CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued). He saw. her mood, and during the evening, when he ran in for a hurried dinner between two deadly debates, he gave her a cheque of a size startling to one so unused to cheques, and' told her to go to-morrow and buy herself some pretty frocks. In the old days—the days of the " ten, three" pearl necklace—she would have been ecstatic at such a gift. Now, though she thanked him smilingly enough, her voice was rather breathless and she looked doubtful and a little bewildered. Man-like he deemed the bewilderment to be called forth at the size of the cheoue. "It's ah right,'" he said, "I can spare it. I don't do all that hard work for nothing. We shall be rich one day, Flower. You trot out, like a good girl, and buy yourself some dresses. Get some evening things — what do you call them'.'— Lady Veronica wears at night. You ought, to dress for dinner now. 1 hat thing you've got on is only fit for mornings. - ' " Oh ! Mark," she said, " like Lady Vera? Like that dress she came in to the lecture? Not so grand as that, surely?" " Well, no," he said; "besides, that isn't your style—you're too fair for orange. But something black and glittering like a scaly snake—she had one like that on last Tuesday. It would suit you. It was splendid." 'Did you see her last Tuesday?"' asked Clo. " Where V" He dropped his eyes and moved his head carelessly. "Oh! I dined there," he said; "didn't I mention it, dear?" " No," she answered unsuspiciously. Of course lie dined "with these great people. He was so great himself. She must expect that. "Lady Vera's a great friend of yours,' Mark, isn't- she?" He glanced up sharply. " Yes. she is very * kind," he answered rather oddly. "That is—she understands me. She is well up in all the ins and outs of. political life. Why do you ask?" "Oh, 1* don't know," said Clo. "I think because she once told mo she was. She meant to be kind and polite, I think." Later 011 she asked, May I tell Dorcas Dearie?— our removal, I mean. She must know already, I should think, but I didn't see her to actually say ' Good-bye.' I told her I should be away for a night or two."

" Oh, you can tell her," he said; " she won't repeat it or make mischief. She's a good soul." The touch of patronage in his tone jarred a little. Her large grave eyes looked at him steadily. • " I never met her equal," she said. Next day she went over to Walworth and told Dorcas about their affairs. Dorcas said little, but her gentle face was graver for a while after, but she wished her frieud every . happiness in .her new . home and spoke gently of the greater responsibility of greater powers. Then they entered so deeply into their plans for their beloved children that they forgot, both of ; them, the unpleasant impression, vague, indefinite, that floated about Mark's request for silence as to his movements. They both loved him too well not to feel an inward chill at his act-ion; yet also too well to discuss the matter even in their secret hearts.

Clo had an idea of carrying on a little club in the half-empty house somewhat on the lines of Mark's sensational Bill; Mark had inspired her originally, and now the idea seemed capable of development. It was to be for quite young children, and was to train them in religion, manners, morals, and the laws of health. Dorcas was delighted. Her sweet hazel eyes were beaming. Here was just the work she loved. She could give a large part of her evenings to such a scheme, and superintend it without neglecting her other work, while Clo would come to and fro from Westminster and. work it at- her will. There were already dozens of little ones only too ready for such assistance. They were busy for an hour drawing up rules and lists of possible membership drawn from the. mass of their ragged little friends. Then Dorcas got up and put on her grey cloak. She must go to her district worktime was up. Clo wended her way homewards full of plans and cheerful hopes, smiling to herself as she walked across Westminster Bridge and looked at the great stretching stone-city of St. Stephen's, and reflecting that Mark was in there doing his great work. She looked wonderfully different, even now, from the girl of old days. The better air of her new home, combined with the excitement of fresh outlooks, new interests and the zest of the whole thing, had given her good looks ft life and verve they had painfully lacked in the old sulky days of nothing to do and nothing to think of save self. Her skin looked clearer and her daily walks part of the way to Walworth now began to give her a faint rose flush and brighten her green eyes. Her features, once puffy and rather "stupid-looking, had developed a clearer, sharper formation by that most mysterious of processes— working of higher thoughts. They now looked short, neat, clearly-cut little features, and the thick under-lip was no longer sulky but only wore that charm of hauteur so adorable in the princesses of the Austrian Royal family, the celebrated lip that Napoleon worshipped in his second wife, the Austrian blonde, and which all the world raved about' in Elizabeth, the murdered Empress, rightly sumamed " Juno." One of those fine days Lady Listower had sent her maid round to the Westminster flat and told Clo to let her be of u.'e to her in choosing some dresses. And the woman's good sense had taught her to advise the plainest of garments for the most part, though in good materials and faultless cut, and Clo's fine figure, now a little fuller than of yore, was tall and straight as that of a slender goddess in the graceful set of these garments. She became a distinctly pretty woman of a very uncommon type, and began to attract marked admiration. Thus gradually these two slum people becan to rise inch by. inch. The air at great heights, as is well known, is light. You must keep a watch upon your head, lest it too got light and dancing. And as heights are mainly a matter of comparison you cannot begin your watching too early. CHAPTER XII. Lady Vera and Mark were certainly great friends, as he had) admitted. It is not- clear what a woman of her temperament saw in such a man as Mark Hading, except that the conquering of such an undoubted and arrogant power brought to her mean little mind some vague sense of gratified vanity. Mark had never looked at a woman of her sort besides herself, and was the last mail to do so. He was rapidly growing famous, but in the particular respect of women was apparently invulnerable. His speeches, his writings, his handsome person, combined with such absolute remoteness, made the subduing of him by herself a great triumph to this lady. She had always imagined herself to possess brainsnot the common ordinary brains that nuke women successfully conduct households, bring tip fine manly sons, paint pictures, write books, or do anything so rudely obvious and definit* 1 , but those wonderful elusive brains that make vou mysteriously misunderstood by your more vulgar acquaintances and have the wonderful effect of exonerating you completely from all duty--parental, filial, wifely or social. Vera thought she could have' ruled Courts, have shone in political intrigue, have swayed Ministers, have been an eighteenth-rentuiy preciensc. She did not for line moment believe that hei power was at fault because no particular Court as yet acknowledged tins subtle. iity sway ; she was only pettishly conscious that the-" background was unexplainably wantinn'. Backgrounds have a horrible way ofbeing wanted at the right moment. No one but a noseui can tell the agony fit" finding those wretched scenes that ought to have supported one sliding, gliding, mov-

ing rapidly away, leaving only bare boards | and no proper footlights. * Those witty cardinals, those gallant kings, those intriguing Courts that Vera felt that she could I have had at hei feet whilst she swam ! about in glorious brocades and said smart' things—how tiresome that they did notseem to be forthcoming, So she said she was misunderstood, quoted the most fata- ; list bits from Omar Khayyam wrongly, 1 criticised all her friends, came down lato to , breakfast, and was rude, very rude, to her ! mother.

Genius will often manifest itself in these, little ways. The artistic or the spirituelle temperament is wonderfully subtle, especially the kind that never produces anything vulgar enough to get into print o: to go to Eton. It marks priceless editions with impudent, little comments out- of its own poor store of stock epigrams and passes for "brilliant" with its frier. ds. Much more brilliant than the Philistine clod who wrote the books for it to scintillate '(bout, of course. So Vera, who had friends who were merely beautiful, or nv rely clever, set her wide-apart almond eves in slightly caricatured pose of pensiveness and said cutting and sarcastic tilings about them in a sweet, thin voice that pioved her to bo infinitely their superior. It was the finer spirit of a tinor ether lightly touching on the coarser, commoner clay that satisfied a vulgar and stupid world. Some of those pretty women had a horrible way of satisfying that vulgar and stupid world—a- rather persistent way in spite of Vera's strictures. It must not be understood from this that Vera herself was not pretty. In a hard, metallic way she certainly was, and most men who mot her voi.lly believed in her hair, which showed' that she was. But having early in her career discovered that blatant selfishness, rudeness, and greed put a certain limit even to the power of beauty, she had explained to herself the tact that she did not entirely rule the world by finding that the world was too vulgar to appreciate her rule. From this her consciousness of genius grew. In place of the Chateaubriand?, the Louis the Fifteenths, the Mazarins, the George the Fourths, the Napoleons that she felt the could have swayed by a jerky wave of her scraggy little finger in a more effective age, she found a materialistic, obstinate, married Labour member with rather bad manners for her cause of triumph. But he took more than •a little finger to fascinate You had to work very hard. You had to be frightfully sympathetic and very touch inglv womanly, arid that was really hard work sometimes. Still, he was worth it. Wherever he went, lie became violently the central figure, and that glory you naturally shared. And he might become rich, and more powerful still. Vera adored every sort of luxury. She must and would have it. She had a very good allowance from her father— some it would have seemed' like a fortune in itself— it. was never half enough for her myriad wants. The presents of a man like Mark would bo infinitely useful. Vera invariably regarded such "friends" from the point of view of presents.

(To be continued daily.)