THE SECOND MRS FAIRFAX

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12527, 17 August 1926, Page 4

THE SECOND MRS FAIRFAX

MARY DREWE TEMPEST

BY

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

[COPYRIGHT.]

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER. CHAPTER I.—Colonel Fairfax welcomes his only son, Ronald, home on a short vacation from Oxford. He is anxious that the boy should take to his stepmother. Henschell, the butler, comes with an invitation to Ronald Fairfax to visit Mrs Fairfax in her boudoir. A vision of womanly beauty and grace entertains young Fairfax, accepts his demur at using the word. "Mother," and tells him to call her Margot, instead. The colonel is charmed at the apparent friendship between stepmother and son. Next morning, after breakfast, a young girl bursts through the French window, kisses her godfather, the colonel, and is introduced to the young wife. Then the colonel tells Diana and Ronald to clear out. Alone with his wife he 6ays it is his wish that Ronald should marry Diana Falconer. Margot asks what will become of her ? He says she will be amplyprovided for, and tnere is the Dower House for her, but, of course, then she would be a widow. She raises brimming eyes to his at the bare thought of such a happening. Diana and Ronald talk together, and the young man takes umbrage at the way in which Diana speaks of his stepmother. After all, she is a Fairfax now. They quarrel. Diana relates the episode to her aunt, and Mrs Falconer advises her to put her hair up and cultivate dignity. Mrs Fairfax decides to motor Ronald to the station. Diana, on horseback,. sings out "Goodbye" as the car whirlß past. Margot promises Ronald to let him know how his father goes on. Sir Philip Welwyn asks Diana, "Who is that woman?" and Diana says it is the second Mrs Fairfax. "Do you know her, Sir Philip?" CHAPTER ll.—Sir Philip Welwyn's thoughts have gone baok into the far past at the sight of the second Mrs Fairfax, In a gambling saloon he hears once more his fair companion ask him for a cheque for ".£SOOO to keep my mouth shut." He lies to Diana as he answers that he has never seen Mrs Fairfax before. Ten minutes later they arc chatting gaily with Mrs Falconer, Diana's aunt. Ronald receives a letter from his father, who asks his eon to entertain his step-mother during the "eights. - " On the point of departure from Oxford Margot makes love to her step-sin and pins on his coat three white violets tied with one of her hairs. As Margot pours forth to him her misery at being married to his father, and implies her love for him, Ronald drops the violets and sets his heel on them. "Let us make sure of that train," he says.- -Mrs Falconer urges that Sir Philip Welwyn and her niece, Diana, should accept the Gharteris invitation. They do so and have a gay time. Charteris is in love with Diana. _ His sister, Cynthia, entertains Sir Philip. ORAPmill. When Sir Philip had released Qjm- , thia to go hack to her guests, he sought out a secluded corner of the | verandah to have a quiet smoke and, subconsciously, to dream sweet nebulous dreams. He had scarcely lighted up when Diana came in from a starlight ‘‘breather” on the arm of gallant Charteris. They passed quite close to Welwyn, and he could not help, noticing the rapt look on the young man’s face as he stooped to catch a laughing comment. Diana’s expression gave the watcher no clue to the state of her affections, but it was unmistakably dear to him that she was basking in Jaer conquest of "Hugh.” As Welwyn saw them, sharp-toothed memory stirred - . . and whipped a blaze of anger into his brooding eyes. "They’re all alike,” he muttered, following their receding figures with unseeing, retrospective gaze; "they play with a man’s heart like a cat with a bird, kill it, lick their lips, and pass on. Diana doesn’t care a hoot for that poor .love-sick fool.” He could not guess that she was only using a society mask to cover wounded pride, in Ronald’s lagging attentions. Charteris had come down, a week before term was up, and Ronald was not caning when term was over 1 The merry days flew by; one festivity pressing hard on the heels of the last, and the last had come and— Was on the wane. At tea Charteris ? announced that guests would be free to follow their own sweet inclinations, "and, as host,” he smilingly told them, "I am going to set a bright example, and claim Miss Falconer’s company on a Wild-West expedition, to seek out the lair of his majesty, the Kingfisher.” Diana looked up and nodded. Sir Philip was sitting beside Cynthia on a small couch in an obscure corner of the room, where the two had' long since staked out a claim with the noisy set-to off partners. His magnetic eyes sought the girl’s, and in answer to that appeal a soft little hand crept into his. In the general exodus that followed, the two instinctively took that now familiar path through the scented meadows to the seat beneath the willows. For a time they sat there without speaking, the girl with hands lying curled up on her lap and eyes—in a rapt day-dream that was almost coming true! —watching the nodding sedgeflowers by the brimming river. She

started when at last Sir Philip broke the sweet silence. “Cynthia,” he said —they had long scrapped prefixes—“do you know that i. return to Jamaica on Friday ?” “Yes . . “It’s a far cry, little girl. I won. der if you will give a thought some, times to a poor lonely devil out; there?” \ Cynthia’s slight frame quivered. “Need you ‘wonder’?” she said, ai little bleakly; then, with a selfless de-i sire to lessen that loneliness, she went; on breathlessly: “I’ve a girl-friend in Kingston: Dona Selby—she married' out there—l’ll write to her.” ! “I wish you were out there, dear; little comrade.” He did not hear a dolorous intake of breath, and went on ruthlessly; ’ “Do you know, child, you are the only girl I’ve known who has never let me down.” I “o—oh . .” Cynthia put out a; hand and touched his sleeve, her eyes eloquent with that young mother-love he knew of old; her mute sympathy; crept about his tired heart with wonderful solace. 1 “I want to tell you. . . think back to the many times you helped me over my boyish griefs! I—l need all your sympathy, for it’s a man’s hurt you are going to hear about flow.” The girl said never a word, hut her eyes were shining brightly, and a‘ comforting little hand slid to his knee, ■ .and rested there. “To begin at the beginning, on leav, . ing Oxford—if you remember—l weni . abroad to study languages, visiting} j among other places, Monte Carlo) j There I saw ‘life’ —an expression I am i not going to explain to you. In my/, hurry to drink the cup of pjeasurej and, incidentally, gain experience, I met many strange women, and, among them, one who at first greatly attracted, then disgusted me. But she was a member of a class apart, and I was deucedly glad to get dear of her. “A sadder and—as I thought—a wiser man, I came home on my unde’s death and took over my inheritance. My mother died shortly after, and grief for her, together with a besetting loneliness (you were at school then and we did not meet) drove me on the wander again. I took passage on a P. and O. with the idea of stepping off where fancy dictated. “It was on the second day out that I met her”—he paused, and looked about him, searching for words, then with a helpless gesture, proceeded: “How can a man describe the woman who storms and conquers his reason within the first five minutes of meeting? I can’t; her loveliness defies all description. She smiled at me, and I . saw heaven in her fair face. My love for her soon became manifest to all the ship, and I was so far gone that I didn’t care a wheeze. Of course, there were plenty of chaps aboard who were yearning to send a bead through my brain—for she’d dropped the lot of ’em for me—and I gloried in their discomfiture, while she and I spent the halcyon Mediterranean days in a welter of delicious sensations. So these two blundered apart—for both had misread the signals. Indeed, each might have sighed: “. . . All the world must know I love you, It is only you are Mind It As they rose to go home through the fragrant fields, he stooped and picked two daisies, one a bud with a pearly dew-drop clinging to it, the other a full-blown flower. “You and me,” he said quaintly, “see, this pretty thing has scarcely opened its eyes to its lover, the sun, but a tear trembles on its fide in anticipation of the sorrows 1 oyp brings in its train.” She took it from him with a little, crooked smile. “The other’s a blase old Johnny, see, it’s all brown at the edges—my wrinkles, Cynthia!—and its wideopen, dry eyes are up to all the dodges of love’s many counterfeits. No doubt it has carried on many disreputable flirtations with flowers of a different colour, for look, its heart’s all gone to seed!” and he tossed it contemptuously away. Daylight was waning fast, and long shadows were creeping about the fields as they passed with lagging feet. Dow down in the heavens a tiny point of light trembled out. , “There’s your star, little comrade,” he said tenderly, “come out before its time to guide us home. It’s name is ‘Cynthia,’ and I shall waish for it every starry night, and tell it some of my worries. Will you twinkle for me to show that you understand?” In the gathering dusk he tried to catch a glimpse of her face, but could only see the pale oval of her cheek. “You won’t twinkle for any other poor devil, will you, Cynthia?” She shook her head, that heartbreaky smile on her lips prevented speech. (To be Continued.)