LOVE SHALL BE FIRST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16497, 24 March 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOVE SHALL BE FIRST.

•w>#.£«V&'W*44 •;;> -*-.iv.l g'i '< BY ARTHUR, W. MARCHMONT, . Author of. "A. Tight . Corner." " The Man ; ' "Who' Was Dead," Etc.

(COPYRIGHT.) ' 's, CHAPTER Xlll—(Continued.) 1 There is no necessity, for you to remain, . madam. I will see you before I leave the house. L wish to be alone with Miss Ledfield," Frank replied curtly. "I will go. Only too gladly," and she moved toward the door. "Take the nurse with you. Go out of the room," he added to Gregg. She looked to her mistress in indecision. " Is it safe to leave her, nurse ?" "No, my lady; not for an instant, was the reply, given flrrriedly. " You hear what she says, Mr. Carton." . "I don't care what she says. Im- ( sist," said Frank sternly. But what good — "I insist," he repeated. "Come then, Gregg." There was a moment's hesitation, and Frank noticed the nervous twitching of the woman's fingers as she glanced from Muriel to Frank and her mistress, and then with slow, reluctant footsteps followed the latter to the door. "It must ' not bo for more than a' minute, sir, she ! ventured. ' " Your mistress will tell you that it ' must be for as long as I decide," he answered, his suspicions roused by her con--1 duct. ' Ho followed them to the door, closed • it after them carefully, and returned to ' the couch, glancing round the room as ho ' went. Ho had no definite purpose in his mind, no plan of action,. no knowledge even of what he expected to discover. He gazed at her a moment, and as his eyes fell on the glass which had fallen from her hand to the couch, he picked it up. The unmistakable smell of brandy sickened him and ho tossed it away in disgust. " Miss Ledfield. Miss Ledfield!" he called. "Can you hear me?" There was no response; not even a repetition of the previous drivelling babble of drunken incoherence. He took her hand and held it a moment; it lay in his with the flaccid limpness of death, and when he let it go it dropped nervelessly to its former helpless position. He called to her again. " You can safely speak to me. I am Frank Carton. I am quite alone here now. I have come to help you. I can help you and will do anything you wish. Speak to me." He made pauses between the sentences, bending over her and looking eagerly for some sign that she could understand him. But she made none; and for a few seconds he gave way to despair. Then, quite suddenly, he made a discovery which explained everything. It was not drink which had stupefied. Her breath was free from the slightest taint of it, and the nauseating smell came from her clothes and hair, on which it had been freely sprinkled. She had been drugged, and with a lingering hope that she might still be able to understand him, he bent still lower and spoke in an earnest whisper. "If you will only trust me, I pledge you my—" He broke off at the rustle of a, dress close to him, and looked up to find the • nurse had returned. "I thought you called ma, sir!" she said, meeting his angry look nervously. " No. I didn't call, ■ but it is as well that you should have come," and with that he went away and surprised Lady Ledfield, who was waiting close to the door .without any sign of her former agi- ■ tation. " I will speak to you now," he ' said, and they went back to the drawingroom. By the time they reached it she had once more assumed the manner of acute distress. " You know our wretched secret now, sir," she began; but he cut her short. "I know part of it, madam, and you may trust me to learn the rest of it without delay," he said sternly. "I know also what you wish me to believe." "You are at liberty to insult me, for I have no heart to retort." "I shall be glad if you will collect yourself sufficiently to answer my questions. > What do you gay is the cause of Miss Ledfield's present condition?" "Surely it is only too terribly ap--1 parent," she cried, with a gesture of despair. " Would to heaven it were not!" "I wish you to state in plain terms, if you please." \ "You wish to torture me still further—" i ■ "On the contrary, I wish you to tell me merely the truth." She motioned as if half-choked by her emotion as she murmured, "The unfortunate girl is—is a hopeless victim of— don't force me to utter the word," she broke off, and cried with every symptom of horror. "I have a special and urgent reason why you should speak plainly." " You could see for yourself that she is—intoxicated," and clasping her hands to her face hysterically, she burst into tears. "I can understand your distress," he said drily, " and you will be all the more delighted that I can promise you a certain cure for her. I cannot trust myself to say all I think of you and of those* you have put in charge of her, for having supplied the means of her getting in such a condition, if your explanation be the true one. But I do not accept any such explanation. I saw Miss Ledfield some few months back in Scotland, and there was absolutely nothing then to suggest any such horror as you now wish me to believe is the truth." "It was because of it that she was sent there. We have tried every means in our power to check the evil,' but—" And she paused and shook her head in deep agitation j "Do you call it checking it to leave the stuff in her room? But there, your inconsistency is too glaring to need mention. The cause of what you have prepared for me to see upstairs is not brandy but drugs. I know how you have done ! it before. I know the treatment to which that unhappy girl has been subjected." "I don't—understand. I can't—" "I will be more candid than you,. Dr", Wetherton is my informant, and" but for the accident he met with on leaving your house yesterday he would have been with me to-day. And it was at my request he came here vesterdav." " She has been solely in Dr. Wetherton's hands, and whatever medicine she has had has been by his prescription," " And I know the reasons used to compel him to subscribe. But it is waste of time to. discuss all that now. I tell you, that you may see the uselessness of this last pretence_ of yours. Miss Ledfield is no such victim as you declare. She has been drugged, and 'the smell of drink is the real pretence, intended to disgust and shock me. I will prove all this. I am going now, and will return very shortly with a specialist, who will decide between us." "I cannot allow that poor girl to he disturbed any more to-day. I will not allow any doctor to see her'," she declared angrily. " I am pleased to see that vour terrible grief has pissed,' However,'if you persist in this attitude, it will not help you in the slightest, and it will most certainly—" He broke off as Gregg rushed into the room. "My lady, I must speak to you at once; at once," she cried in the utmost excitement. "Miss Muriel—" She paused at a gesture from her mistress. " You had better go, Mr. Carton," said the latter. t " On the contrary, if this concerns Miss Ledfield I must know what it is," replied Frank firmly. • Lady Ledfield hesitated, and then turned to the woman. " Leave the room, Gregg Iw Ml come to you presently. Do you hear me? Leave the room," she added aS the nurse lingered. At 'that she went, and her mistress resumed her seat and waited in silence for Frank: to make the next move. ' t. "I have no wish to prevent your going to her, he said, embarrassed by the awk-jrardneja-oi : the situate -■ "*

"I' am obliged by your n P m;. r^ ■ i sir,"., Lady'LedLll the lip, as she got up and went out He remained a few minutes sorely* „" ' I plexed what to do, and at lengthX& ' & to lose no more time before brinßui. ~ *1 doctor to Muriel. As he opened thl j" * « Lady Ledfield met him. - ainad . ■ \a) " Has anything happened to Miss Ua ■ V field ?" he asked anxiously. w " § "Nothing more than you have ahead V seen for yourself, Mr. Carton, but I cT 7 ' P to Bay that I have considered matt* ' f ; and am perfectly willing to leave ever*' i • thing in your hands in regard to her "' I "It is a very sudden change," he m ' 1 ; wondering what had caused it. ai v f"lt is because I recognise I have >, P alternative." ;,°' ; f : "I am going for a doctor, and shall f ■ ' return in less than an hour." . He hurried out of the house, with F feeling of intense elation at the 'result 1 '1 his visit, and absolutely confident th°! ■ I' I all the obstacles had at last been ove ' I come. 1 ■ ; He went first to the hotel in order u ' = I obtain the name and address of specialist, and the last thought i n hi* r . mind was that ho \va s to find waiting f- U I a him _ there difficulties before which 111 I i previous obstacles paled into utter in»J' • ficance. ■* I CHAPTER XIV. | . j£ FELLOW-PASSENGERS 1 I The Agrippa, one of the newest (li ,j | I • finest vessels of the Unic Line, wag rac - ing across the Atlantic, and eve ' i possible pound of coal was being shovelled '•■■ into her furnaces in the attempt to low» ; the record fur the eastern passage- a ■ one of the passengers was more'than • delighted by the speed she made. This was Gordon Carton. Frank's lathe? ' I who was hurrying in hot haste to London > as the result of Frank's last cable—that > he could not give up Muriel. He had ' been only too glad to hear that Frank : > thought of marrying, had sympathised I"' with his troubles, and cheered him with I i every possible encouragement until the I \ letter had arrived saying that Muriel was I ■ the daughter of Sir James Ledfield, aj I Frank had believed when writing home f i The news had disturbed and troubled 1 him intensely, threatening, as it did to % i rako up secrets of the past which had ' sH been buried for over twenty years, Of ■■'' * - all the girls the wide world over the but lip he would have wished Frank to marry ■ ~' , was Sir James Ledfield's daughter, for his \ . fear was that the man was his youngej I brother. j ' "It's like a hideous nightmare that '•■ the boy should have fixed on my \■ . i brother's child," he said to his wife over < and over again after the receipt of the ' ' ' i letter. ! : : ; But it may not he your brother after * all," she had suggested; and it *as 0 ; settle that possibility that he had determined to cross the Atlantic. He hoped fervently that his wife's m%' gestion was correct; and the fact of the T . title strengthened the hope. All that Be remembered of his brother made it ex- . ' tremely unlikely that he could ever have I " ' done anything to win a knighthood, and \ ■ < \ there was nothing in the family antece- . dents to make it possible for him to have' 1 ■'■ ' inherited a title. I The twenty years and more which had' ' intervened since he had seen his brother M ! ' —years of great prosperity and much % i happiness—seemed very short as :.the>; ■ events of the past were recalled now; andV \ '{■ 1 the complete change in himself was surely i one of the most remarkable. He) wWi \ i been very wild in his youth, and hiss; \\'i i excesses and dissipation had culminated in '■■'■ I; a secret marriage, the discovery of which > had led to the final breach with his father, 1; who had packed him off to America and:?-, j h I insisted upon his changing his name.: % f i From that moment he had been Gordon \l ' Carton. • \ j-: > But the change of name and country • had not sobered him and he was little l > better than a drinking loafer in New I ■ York's Bowery, when the news of -lis"; 1 .; 11l young wife's death had reached him. ißj n\ 1 had then been on the verge of utter ruin, jjl > and he recalled his bitter thought at tilt jjfli 1 time— she was far better dead tha' -w ■ ', tied to such a wastrel outcast. \' • o9 He was almost at the last extremity 1>: l| l when suddenly another influence had coma - M - into his life. The influence of a good a ' angel, the deserted wife of a scoundrel % a named John Eldwood. She had saved Inn, v | ' rousing what was left of his manhood; I and all that had occurred since wag due I > to her. There had been nothing but the! - purest regard between them, and he had f never ceased to recall how her efforts had i helped him. The resolve to work, the.- • difficulties through which she cheered ' him, tho fight against temptations, the 1 gradual and hardly won victory, the be- ■■' f ginning of real success, and then the op-' ] portunity of better (things in Canada. ! • which had come just when they heard of t \ her husband's death. i They had been married at once in order | to go to the new life together. A year i! ■ of infinite happiness fDr them both had • followed, and then a s idden trouble. He , learnt that Eldwood had purposely spread > the report of his death in the hope that : his wife would marry again and thus bj tho victim of his infamous blackmail. i That was the one secret Carton had. kept from the wife he idolised,. owing to* i his dread that she would feel bound to ■ leave him. It had been unthinkable that ; she should ever return to the clutches of such a brute as Eldwood. > He had submitted to be blackmailed,' i taking the most careful precaution to pre- ; vent Eldwood tracing them. He had gone to New York to see the man, and for i some years had paid him liberally through ■ a confidential agent. , Then Eldwood had . been arrested, sentenced to a long term ; of imprisonment and released only a short time before this hurried decision to go to ■' England. Carton's intense anxiety to settle the i doubt whether Sir James Ledfield was I really his younger brother, his distress on ■* Frank's account, and the dread of the V 1 disclosure about the past, put all other J ■ thoughts out of his mind. / " I hope to heaven he won't prove to * be that sneak of a brother of mine," was his fervent wish, a s he rose from his chair and paced the. deck. He had always thought of James as a poor creatine. l " He'd make the worst of everything to ! the boy. But if it's all right, he shall j many that girl, if money will do the . 1 trick," he added, his clear-cut, pleasant, still youthful-looking features breaking into a bright smile. He wa 3 .ready to give all he possessed to secure Frank's happiness. And there was absolutely nothing against the ladhe still thought of Frank as a lad, after tho manner of fathers—he was uean-iiv-«".f, straight as any man could wish his boy to be, would make a splendid husband for any woman, and would be rich enough to content even a miser. Twenty years of great prosper had made Carton something of an optimist; f ■ it was his habit to look on the hopeful side of things, and thus he trie 1 sedulously to feel confident that all this tangle j would be straightened out and the shadow disnerscd, as other shadows in his W« I ' had been. ill Then the unexpected happened. The y luncheon bugle sounded, and. as he was 8 passing to his table, he jostled against ■ jj someone who was just taking Ins seat. j "Sorry," he murmured. j The man turned and then straightened J up in sudden surprise. "By gee! if it | isn't Carton!" he exclaimed," holding out \ his hand. j It was John Eldwood. | Carton wouldn't see the hand, however, and after hesitating a moment in some 1 consternation, pushed on towards hi' | table. J m " Quite right, Carton," called Eldwood. 1 | " I'm as hungry as vou are, and our job m now is, to eat. We'll have a chat over | old times after lunch." | But the unwelcome meeting had taken I away Carton's appetite, and after playi'Jg IL with his food for a time he rose and went I out, telling Eldwood as he passed that he I would be found on deck. It was useless -f. to shirk a meeting with the man. That 5^ would be impossible on board the same t j ship, and it might be dangerous as well, \ But it was a stroke of real bad luck that j Eldwood should be his fellow-passenger on | the Agrippa. The one good thing about it was that the man was a scoundrel,. and } always _ ready ; to be bought off. The ques- I tion with -him; now, as alwavs, would be, ;| ■.-. how much? " . * . ?--*4\jS {To be continued pa Wednesday next) -,V 1 >