THE HOLLOW OF HER HAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15096, 12 September 1912, Page 4

THE HOLLOW OF HER HAND.

PUBLISHED BY SrECIAJj ABBANQEUEST.

BY, GEORGE BARE McCUTCHEON,

author of *' Grau-tark," " Tmxton King," etc.

CHAPTER Vl.—(Continued.) Hetty stood staring down at the blazing logs for a full minute before giving expression to the thought that troubled her. " Sara," she said, meeting her friends eyes; with a steady light in her own, y. y did Mr. Wrandall. ask for mo instead of you? It is you he is coming to visit, not me. It is your house. Why should— "Jlv dear," said Sara, glibly, "I am merely Lis sister-in-law. 11 wouldn't be necessary to ask me if lie should come. Ho knows he is welcome." " Then why should he feel called upon

to—" T „ " So mo men like to telephone, I suppose, said the other, coolly. " I wonder if you will ever understand ■*ow I feel about—about certain things, Kara?"

' " What, for instance?" "Well, his very evident interest in me, tried the girl, hotly. "He sends me flowers is the second box this week— tl± id he is kind, so very friendly, Sara, that I. can't bear itl really can t. Mrs. Wrandall stared at her. "You can't very well send him about his business," she said, '• unless lie becomes more than friendly. Now, can you.' " But it "earns soso horrible, so beastly," groaned the girl. Sara faced her squarely. See here, Hetty," sho said, lcvelly, "we have made our bed, you and I. We must lie in ittogether. If Leslie Wrandall chooses to fall in love with you that is his affair, not ours. Wo must face every condition. In plain words, we must play the game. " What could be more appalling than to have him fall in lovo with inc.' The other way 'round would he more dramatic, I should say." •'Good God, Sara!" cried tho girl in horror. " How can you even speak of such a thing?" " After all, why shouldn't" began Sara, hut stopped in tho middle of her suggestion, with the result that it had its full effect without being uttered in so many cold-blooded words. The girl shuddered. " I wish, Sara, you would let me unburden myself 'completely to 'you," she pleaded, seizing her friend's hands. " 'You have forbidden me—"

Sara jerked her hands away. Her eyes flashed. "I do not want to hear it," she cried, fiercely. Never, never! Do you •understand? It is your secret. I will not share it with you. I should hate you if I knew everything. As it is, I love you because you are a woman who suffered at the hand "of one who made 'me suffer. There is nothing more to say. Don't bring up the subject again. I want to be your friend for ever, not your confidante. There is a distinction. You may be able to see how very marked it is in our case, Hetty. .What one does not know seldom hurts."

" But I want to justify myself " It isn't necessary," cut in the other, so peremptorily that the girl's eyes spread into a look . of anger. . Whereupon Sara iWrandall threw her arm about her and ' drew her down beside her on the chaise longue. "I didn't mean to be harsh," she cried. "We must not speak of the past—that's all. ; The future is not likely to hurt us, dear. Let us avoid the past." "The ! future!" . sighed the girl, . staring blankly before her. "To appreciate, what it is to be," said the other, " you have but to think of what it might have been." " I know," said Hetty, in a low voice. "And yet I sometimes wonder if—" Sara interrupted. . " You are paying me, dear., instead of the law," she said gently. "lam not'a harsh creditor, am I?" "My life. belongs to you. I give it 'cheerfully, even gladly." "So you have said before.. Well, if it belongs to me, you might at least permit ' me to develop it as I would any other profession. I take it as an investment. It .will probably fluctuate." ; \ A;-': " Now you < are jesting!" "Perhaps," said Sara, laconically. ■ . The next morning Hetty set forth for her accustomed tramp over the roads that . wound through the estate. Sara, the American, dawdled at home, resenting the chill spring drizzle that did not in the least discourage the Englishwoman.' The mistress of the house and of the girl's destiny stood in the broad French window watching her as she strode springily, healthily down the maple-lined avenue in the direction of the gates. • The gardeners . doffed their caps to her as she passed, and also looked after her with surreptitious glances. iv*-" - . There was a queer smile on Sara's lips , that remained long after the girl was lost to view beyond the lodge. It was still on her lips but gone from her eyes as she : paused - beside the old English tablo to bury her nose in one of the gorgeous roses that Leslie had sent out to Hetty tho day . before.. They were all about the room, dozens of them. The girl had insisted on having them downstairs instead of in her own little sitting-room, for which they plainly were intended. A nasty sea turn had brought lowering grey skies and a dreary, enveloping mist that never quite assumed the dignity of a drizzle and yet blew wet and cold to the very marrow of the bones. -Hetty was : used to such weather. - Her English blood warmed to it. As • she strode briskly across the meadow-land road in the direction of the woods that, lay ahead a soft ruddy glow crept up to her cheeks, and a sparkle of joy into her - eyes. She walked strongly," rapidly. Her straight, lithe , young figure was a joyous thing to behold. High boots, short skirt, a loose jacket, and a broad felt hat made up her costume. She. was graceful, adorable; a young .healthy, beautiful creature in whom the blood surged quickly, strongly: the type • of woman men are wont to' classify as " ineffably feminine," though why we should differentiate is no small mystery unless there really is such a thing as one woman possessing an adorably feminine quality denied to her sisters. Be that as it may, there is a distinction, and men prido themselves on knowing it. Hetty was alluringly feminine. Leaving out the matter of morals, whatever they are, and coming right up to her as an example of her sex, pure and simple if you please, we are bound to say that sho. was perfect. The best thing we' can say of Challis Wrandall is that he took the same view of her that we should, and fell in love with her. He would have married her if ho could, there isn't much doubt as to that, no matter what she had been before he knew her for what she was at the time of his discovery. No more is it to bo considered unique that his brother should .have experienced a similar interest in her, knowing even less. She was tho sort of girl one falls in love with and remembers it the rest of his life. What of her present position in the house and in the heart of the one woman who of all those we know is .abnormally unfeminine in that sho subordinates the natural and instinctive animosity of woman toward another who robs her of a husband, no matter how unworthy or how hateful he may have been to her behind the screen with which she hides her sores from tho world. The answer is ready: Hetty was a slave bound to an extraordinary condition. There had been no coercion on the""part of Challis Wrandall's wife; no actual restraint had been set j upon tho girl. The situation was a plain one from every point of view: Hetty owed j her life to Sara, she would have paid with her life's blood the debt she owed. It had become perfectly natural for her to consider herself a willing, grateful prisoner—a prisoner on parole. She would not, could not, abuse the parole. She loved her gaoler with a love that know no bounds; she loved tho walls Sara had thrown up about her she was content to live and die in the luxurious cell attended by love and kindness and mercv After all, Hetty was oven more feminine than we seem able to convoy in words. Not in that she lacked in pride or sen- - sitiveness, but that she possessed to a self..satisfying degree the ability to subordinate both of these to a loyalty that had -> ao bojjadg. There jvera.fine.-JfecUgg^.-.in •

Hetty. She was honest with herself. She did not look beyond her present horizon for brighter skies. They were as bright as they could ever be, of that she was sure • her hopes lay within the small circumference that Sara Wrandall made possible for her. She knew that her peril, her ruin lay in the desire to step outside that narrow circle, for out there the world was cold and merciless.

She lived as ouo charmed by some powerful influence, and was content. Not once had the fear entered her soul that Sara would turn against her. Her trust in Wrandall's wife was infinite. In her simple, devoted heart she could feel no pripk of dread so far as the present was concerned. The past was dreadful, but it was the past, and its loathsomeness was moderated by subtle contrast with the present. As for the future, it belonged to Sara Wrandall. It was safe.

If Sara were to decide that she must be given up to the law, all well and good. She could meet her fate with a smile for Sara and with love in her heart. She could pay in full if the demand was made by the wife of the man she had left in the grim little upstairs room at Burton's Inn on that never-to-be-forgotten night in March.

The one great, inexplicable mystery to •her was the heart of Sara Wrandall. She could not fathom it. She could understand her own utter subjection to the will of the other woman; she could explain it satisfactorily to _ herself, and she could have explained it to the world. Self-preservation in the beginning, self-surrender as time went on, self-sacrifice as the prerogative. And so it was on this grey spring day, that she gazed undaunted at the world, with the shadows all about her, and hummed a sprightly tune through warm red lips that were kissed by the morning mist. _ She came to the bridge by the mill, long since deserted and now a thing of ruin and decay. A man in knickerbockers stood leaning against the rail, idly gazing down at the trickling stream below. The brier pipe that formed the circuit between hand and lips sent up soft blue coils to float away on the drizzle. She passed behind him, with a single furtive, curious glance at his handsome undisturbed profile, and in that glance recognised him as the man she had ; seen the day before. When she was a dozen rods away the tall man turned his face from tho stream and sent after her the long-restrained look. There was something akin to cautiousness in that look of his, as if ho were afraid that she might turn her head suddenly and catch . him at it. Something began stirring in his heart, tho nameless something that" awakens when least expected. He felt the subtle, sweet femininity of lior as she passed. It lingered with him as ho looked. • She turned the bend in- the road a hundred yards away. For many minutes he studied the stream below without really seeing it. . Then ho straightened up, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and set off slowly in her wake, although die had been walking in quite tho -opposite direction when he came to the bridge—and on a mission of some consequence, too. There was the chance that lie would meet her coming back.

- . CHAPTER VII. • A FAITHFUL CIUYOX-rOINT. Leslie Wrandall came out on the eleventhirty. Hetty was at the station with the "motor, a sullen resentment in hor heart, but a welcoming smile on'her lips. The sim shone brightly. The sound glared with the white of reflected skies. ."I thought of catching the eight o'clock," he cried enthusiastically, as he dropped his bag beside the motor in order to reach, over and shake hands with her. "That would have gotten me here hours earlier. The difficulty . was that I didn't think of the eight o'clock until I awoke at nine."

" And then you had the additional task of thinking about breakfast," said Hetty, but without a. trace of sarcasm in her manner.; . •

" I never think of breakfast," said he, amiably. "I merely eat it. Of course, it's a task to eat it sometimes, but—well, how are you? How do you like it out here?" . .

He was beside her oil the broad seat, his face beaming, his gay little moustache pointing upward at the ends like oblique brown exclamation points, so expansive was his smile. -

" I adore it," she replied, her own smile growing in response to his. ; ; It was impossible to resist the good nature of him. She . could not dislike him, even though she dreaded him deep down in her heart. Her blood was hot and cold by turns when she was with him, as her mind opened and shut to thoughts pleasant and unpleasant with something of the regularity of a fish's gills in breathing. "I knew you would. It's great. You won't care much for. our place, Miss Castloton. Sara's got the pick of the coast in that place of hers. Trust old Sebastian Gooch to get the best, of everything. If my dad .or my grand-dad had possessed a tenth of the brain that that old chap had, we'd have our own tabernacle up there on the point, instead of sulking at his back gate. That's really where we're located, you know. His back, gate opens smack in the- face of our front one. I think he did it with malice aforethought, too. His back gate is two miles from the house. - It wasn't really necessary to go so far for a back gate as all that, was it? To make it worse, he put a big sign over it for us to read : 'No trespassing. This means you.' Sara took it down after the old boy, died." "I suppose by that time tho desire to trespass was gone,," - she said. One doesn't enjoy freedom of that sort." " I've come to believe that the only free things we really covet are passes to the theatre. We never get over that, I'm sure. I'd rather have a pass to the theatre than a 10-dollar bill ' any time. I say, it was nice of you to come down to meet me. It was mora than Ior —expected." Ho almost said "hoped for." "Sara was too busy about the house to come," sho explained quickly. "And I had a few errands to do in the village." "Don't spoil it!" "I am a* horribly literal person," she said. Better that than literally horrible," he retorted, rather proud of himself for it. "It's wonderful, the friendship between you two girls—Sara's not much more than a girl, you see. You're so utterly unliko in every way." "It "isn't strange to mc," said she, simply, but without looking at him. "Of courso, I can understand it," ho went on. "I've always liked Sara. She's bully. Much too good for my brother, God" rest his soul. He never—"

"Oh, don't utter a tiling like that, even in jest," .she cried, shocked by his glib remark. Ho flushed. " You didn't know Challis," he said, almost surlily. Sho held her breath. After a moment the points of his little moustache went up again in the habitual barometrical smile. Rather priggish, supercilious smile, sho thought, taking a, glance at his lace. "'I say I can understand it, but mother and Vivian will never be able to get it through those tough skulls 01 theirs. They really don't like Sara. Snobs, both of 'em —of the worst kind, too. Why, mother has always looked upon Sara as a—— sort of brigandess, the kind that steals children and holds them for ransom. Of course, old man Gooch was as common as ragsutterly impossible, you —but that shouldn't stand against Sara. By tho way, her father called her Sallie. Her mother was a very charming woman, they say. We never knew her. For that matter, we never know tho old man until he became prominent as a father-in-law." The girl was silent. He went on. " Mother likes you. She doesn't say it in £0 many words, but I can sec that she wonders how you can have anything in common with Sara. She prides herself on being able to distinguish blue blood at a glance. Silly notion she's got, but—— "Please don't go on, Mr. Wrandall," cried Hetty in distress. " I'm not saying she isn't friendly to Sara nowadays," he explained. " She's changed a good deal in the last few months. I think she's broadening out a bit. Since that visit to Nice, she's been qui to different.. As a matter of fact, she expects to sco a. good bit of Sara and you j this summer. It's liko a spring thaw, by 1 jq.VO,. it is." [' (To.ihe : continued. daily.)