A PLUNGE INTO THE UNKNOWN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16611, 8 December 1919, Page 8

A PLUNGE INTO THE UNKNOWN.

FASCINATING STORY OF POPULAR INTEREST

BY CHARLES D. LESLIE.

Author of “A Wild Wager,” “Loved for Herself,” "The Ernngton Pearls Mystery,” “The Power of the Purse,” etc., etc. CHAPTER XXlll.—Continued. Eva waited; from dreading to hear the hell ring she passed into wishing it would. She wanted to get the interview over, and then perhaps the tears would come, perhaps, later, sleep. After a while the torture dulled and she found herself wondering why fate had given her such a. father, so inconstant in his villainy that he could carry a valuable stolen necklace in his overcoat pocket and forget all about it for two hours. She recalled him saying half comically: “Tut, tut, my wretched memory, quite forgot I had an overcoat on which I took olf when I first came. Going away I lifted my hat off the peg, and yet never saw it.” H 6 was mildly sorry for himself, that ho had ruined her life never occurred to him. Ho was not only a bad man, but a bad thief. At last when she was stiff and weary, and the night, so she imagined, nearly over, she rose and switched on the light. But it was only half-past 12. She gave Arnold a little longer, then undressed and crept into bed. And sleep kindly closed her sorrow-laden eyes. Daylight, though the sunshine blazed without, brought her no lifting of tho cloud. The situation, dispassionately observed, remained as had as it could be. '■ But, refreshed by rest and her hath, j she began to permit herself to hope, j Arnold loved her, not idly, not as a toy I or light-o’-love, but as the woman he j desired to make his wife. Perhaps j love would make him wise. Perhaps j he would take her word, read truth | in her eyes. And, of course, if he I said he was willing to believe her, if j he bade her tell him all, assuring her i of his forgiveness, she would frankly j confess. I

Ho came, slew the tiny spark of hope that flickered in her heart, and left her for ever.

She cried a little when he had gone, but his repudiation of her did not hurt so badly as she expected; she was past fooling acutely . Nature will only allow ns to suffer a certain amount of moral or physical torture, and Eva had reached tho limit of endurance. The very worst had happened, and with that knowledge her mood changed, her vitality awoke, a craving for movement, action, possessed her. The first thing to do, she decided, was to change her address. She had conceived an aversion for the flat. Arnold haunted tho sitting room, Arnold, not as the cold judge who had sentenced and condemned her. but Arnold as the lover whoso lips and eyes told her all a girl in love wants to hear and see. She would go melancholy mad if she stayed. And besides,

by an immediate departure she would give her father the slip. He would bo hack again sooner ijr later, indeed he might come at any moment. Spurred by this thought sho started packing in -a frenzy of energy, and in half an hour had all her possessions ready for departure. A few minutes later, Mrs. Dowson interviewed, and the flat key surrendered, she was driving away from Highgate. By one o’clock she was installed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, and sitting [down to luncheon with the usual ijucer collection of guests found in London boarding-houses in general, and Bloomsbury hoarding-houses in particular. English spinsters,''American tourists of both sexes, including tho inevitable and awful American child, two or three stray foreigners from the Continent, painfully anxious to pick up tho English language. Each party had their own table, Eva, a tiny table to herself, but tho conversation was general; everybody knew everybody.* She listened to tho banal talk, and tried to take some interest in it. Sho tried to eat, hut though for 21 hours only apologies for meals had passed her lips, a few mouthfuls of food sufficed. She fancied she was tiled, but it was the reaction following tho stress of emotion she had suffered that left her limp and flaccid. But she would not give way to lethargy. ’Though tempted to go and lie, down after lunch, she resolutely went out, visited several agencies, and put her name down as seeking a travelling engagement. Then she decided to go and sit in one of the parks, hut rejected nil the better-known in fear ol her father, or one of the people she had met as Lady Don icon, coming across her. And that was how chance brought her and Francis Doulton together.

Less than an hour of his discovery of her, they wore occupying two chairs in friendly intimacy at a small table in a tea-room near tho Crown, and Eva was feeling a different woman. She now knew that what sho was needing when she sat solitary and in tears in tho park was tea and sympathy. Lord Doulton had given her both without stint. And hope shone on the horizon i like a star. .Not only did he accept ; her story unhesitatingly, but he intimated that he would not rest till tho cloud that hung over her was lifted, and her innocence in all participation of the theft acknowledged by the world. “I’ll get Eva to take up the case,” i ho said, “as soon as she comes back, which will he to-day' or to-morrow at latest. I expect.” But though he spoke thus, a horrid doubt immediately assailed him. Suppose his wife, whom jealousy had driven away, should turn jealous of this girl, her double, who, without her leave or licence, had been masquerading as herself? It was likely. Eva Wantage said: “I can hardly expect Lady Doulton to befriend mo. She is tho one person who has a just grievance against mo. All 1 caa iiope ior is for forgiveness. I hope, since you are so kind, you’ll put my conduct before her as i'nvouraoly ns possible, and explain the circumstances that led mo to accept Mrs. Tourmaline’s otter.”

“'Of course, I will. Berlyn told me nil about it. But Eva’s reasonable—was, at least, up to the time she left me. Eva’s treated me abominably, Miss Wantage ” The Eva who was not his wife listened to his story, and returned his sympathy double-fold. She was tremendously grateful to him, and really thought him badly treated; how could any wife desert so agreeable a husband Nevertheless loyalty to her own sex, a virtue women have of late developed, led hev'to refrain from adverse comment on the wife. She advised him to say as little about her as possible until there was a complete reconciliation between husband and wife. And even that, she pointed out, lay in the future, the indefinite future, for Lady Boulton was lost to the world and her husband. This observation set Francis looking at iris watch.

‘ ‘Perhaps she’s back by now; I feel in ray hones she is. It’s.' six o’clock. Lct’s'go and look for a taxi. X’m going to sec you homo first, Miss Wantage.” Eva let him, on his word that he would reveal her address to no living man or woman without her leave, and on this understanding they parted in Woburn Square.

Francis drove heme, and on Baldwin opening the door, perceived at once from the man’s suppressed excitement, shown by the twitching of his fingers, and the deeper wrinkles on his lined face, tlia-t something had happened. ‘■Her ladyship has returned, my lord,” he said, with due dignity. ‘‘She’s in the study awaiting your lordship’s return.”

Accepting this information with a nod, Lord Boulton entered the study. Lady Boulton—it was really Lady Boulton this time—rose at his entrance. She was dressed in an elaborate afternoon frock, which her husband remembered eulogising early in the year, and her golden head was uncovered.• Francis noted that, she had come home for good. But, he wondered, had ha enough influence over her to persuade her to champion tho cause of her double?” (Continued daily.)