"The Itinerant Lover."

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13863, 27 March 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

"The Itinerant Lover."

(By May Edginton.)

Although not blessed, or hampered—according to the point of view—with any particular business or vocation in life, Charles Faraday was always distinctly a man of affairs. That they were affairs of the heart rather thna of the head had ever, been -a • source of annoyance and uneasiness to: the Dowager Lady Faraday; it was the business instinct in her that prompted her annoyance at time and opportunities lost in -useless dalliance. W hen her eldest son reassured her on his .brother's score, she only shook her •becapped, evangelical head, and prophesied; .that some/, day Charles would iind : himself seriously involved. After tlie. young man, however, had been involved iu a whole series of more, than usually undesirable escapes, she began to; lose patience/-and spoke seriously" to him about , his shortcomings. - '' I consider it'lamentable," she told hitb,. that' a young man of your age can .seriously devote himself to* an endless series of flirtations, often entirely out of your own class of life. Some day,; Charles, you will burn your fingers, and " —righteously— you will have to bear the brunt of the burning. Qnly yesterday I was ashamed " —she wiped her eyes—" when my very old friend, Cecilia Caversliam, came .to me about her own girl. • That you should trifle with the affections of Cecilia's child——"

He looked pained. . • "'I consider myself the victim of temperament," lie murmured deprecatIngly. .

."'Victim'!" Lady Faraday snapped. "'Victim,' indeed!! Victim of a fiddlestick! It was Cecilia's girl who ' was ' victimised.;' Everyone is talking about it. And it would have been a very satisfactory arrangement for you, now I come to speak of it. ' But, instead, the poor dear child "■ she applied the handkerchief again. . Charles lifted his fine' eyebrows in his" usual charming'distress. j** I had really/ no idea —: —" he began. , . . .""Nonsense!" said Lady_Faraday. " With experience you ought to know'how susceptible girls of that age are. And then it's not only nice girls like Cecilia's, but—but— — I really am ashamed. When I only remember the dreadful husband of that terrible little ihusic-hall person who came the other day to swear at you ■" Charles was adjusting a new tie critically at the pier glass. Its , slate colour almost exactly matched his fine eyes. His mother's anger rose. ;" It must: end!!" his mother declared firmly'.' •'I insist upon it, Charles. It is a'Ssurd that a young man of ability should have the allowance you have settled upon him and pass his life in utter idleness. I shall speak to Derek about it." "Derek will not interfere, said Charles complacently. He knew his brother. / •' .What aire vour ' plans, for next ■week?" asked Lady Faraday, changing her tactics. _ „ I'm going down to St. Medbury, he answered, "to stay with Mrs Sim-monds-Smith." . " With whom?" said his mother almost in ashriek. ."I never even heard the name before! Some impossible person, 1 suppose, whom you have picked up somewhere?" "She picked me up," he explained. " Don't split hairs, said 'Lady Faraday impatiently. "Is she youngt Is she pretty?" „ ' "Neither one nor the other, lie answered truthfully. _ "I don't believe yon!" said Lady Faraday sharply. "I suppose she is a." dreadful, made-up, would-be-young person " —in a meretricious Ladj Faraday proclaimed her own fifty years bv uncompromising caps and grey hair —"and vou will get into some fresh entanglement. And why, for goodness* sake, St. Medbury?" "It was a cathedral," lie remarketl. •"Don't talk nonsense to me about cathedrals!" said Lady Faraday angrily. "I shall write to your uncle Rupert, I think, and ask him to get you into the diplomatic service, or—or—find a seat for you to contest, or ° r *'But I should go in for neither, mother," said' Charles, escaping. Mrs Simmonds-Smith was a very merry widow indeed, of almost middle. age verging oir portliness, and with a pardonable soupcon of the make-up and would-be young element with which Lady Faraday had accredited her. Before she settled in St. Medbury she had possessed somewhat of an itinerant temperament, and when she discerned its like in Charles Faraday she took to the scapegrace at-once. She had met him in Switzerland one summer before the era of portliness and make-up, which had only just dawned—and lie had formed fl. very agreeable part ot her holiday. They travelled, walked talked and climbed togther, and, both being experts at the same game, and pleasiirablv recognising the tact thej plaved together, quite assiduously and eharminglv. Neither kindled a fire, only the pleasantly temporary semblance of. one, so neither was really burned. , . •• You must come down and stay with me in St. Medbury," she said to h, He was a well-born boy, and looked it and he was also quite amazingly handsome. She would not mind dangling him before her provincial neighis a cathedral," she added, " and quite a lot of pretty girls." It- tvas a year or two before he remembered the invitation again, and the sriver of it; then, having an empty week »r two before him, and his mother s temper feeing unusually he wrote an insinuatingly reproachful reminder to Mrs Simmonds-Smith, and betook himself to St. Medbury. "Mv little niece," said Mrs Sini-monds-Smith playfully, as she gave lnm tea in her rather overdecked drawingroom, "is staving with me. Now she shook at him" an arch torcfingpr—- " she is a little girl—a dear little girl—just from school, and you must behave very, very nicely. My dear Mr Faradav, I remember you, I assure you. Ho .thought he also remembered lief, before this portliness tha treallv distressed him, when the admonitory forefinger had been a taper thing ot beauty," but he only smiled with charming deprecation. . Ahhe said. I adore ingenues —onlv we never have the bona-fide thine nowadays, dowe?" "But that - is just," said Mrs Sirri-monds-Smith. with a little shriek ot liushter, " what you nnist not do. I know vour adoration" (he made a mental note that fat women should not he arch), " and yon srre not to adore mv little Eerto. She rerfUy is ingenue vou know-an interesting mixture of ingenuousness and unusual matuntv for her are. Schoolgirl innocence, said Mrs Simmonds-Smith with the air of an analyst, " and Southern impetuMy poor brother married a si-

ciHnn. ,) She applied the adjective compassionately as if with a figurative headrbnfce at the idea of the impetuosity of Sicilian women in general. Faraday Thought there might be possibilities in Mrs Rimmonds-Pmith's niece. Tho reptible organ that he fondly called his heart was at the moment- unoccupied. "I shall be delighted to make her acquaintance," he said very candidly.

At that moment the door opened and Roberta came into the room. ' Came" is a wholly inadequate description. There was a sinuous littleness, an overpowering grace of movement about Roberta that invested the r ordinary action of entering a room with somethmg indescribably subtle, made it an .entrancing sight, a joy, a delight, that conveyed the very poetry of motion. She was slim, not with the lank, boyish slimness of the eighteen-year-old English miss, but with a slender fulness and roundness that gave, just as Mrs Simmonds-Smith had said, an impression of early maturity. Though only a little above middle "height, her splendid carriage gave her girlishness dignity, and the fire smouldering beneath the? dark softness of her Southern eyes formed a piquant contrast with the virginal curves of lier full, red mouth. In the curves of bust and throat, and cheek, and in the glorious sweeping line from shoulder to foot,

there was the unmistakable promise !oi splendid womanhood. Her black' hail

was parted and coiled simply in a schoolgirlisli knot on the nape of the neck, and she wore a white frock that clung to her, and fell and ripped away lovingly about her. Pale, and with "a sort of tentative, innocent shyness, she came forward, more like a graceful child than a young woman. " You are Mr Faraday," she said, without waiting for an introduction, putting out a soft, brown-tinted hand with ingenuous friendliness. Her voice was the voice of the South —low, liquid, musical; dormant in it there lay the troublous suggestion of passion. - \ •"

As Fara'dav listened and looked at her lie fell headlong and irretrievably into one of his easy loves. The young man, inured to conquest, puKbued the tenor of his easy, conscienceless way, but the conquest,of Roberta ' was accomplished almost before the lazy desire, for it had well been formulated in his mind. He put put a finger., and the citadel fell. He. spoke the word he knew so well how to speak he looked the look he .knew so well , how to look from his eloquent, long-lashed eyes; both word and look had become something of a . parrot repetition with him. The passionate child •of : the South reciprocated this semblance of a

love with a love that was only too real, hot from the depths of a hitherto unstirred but impetuous heart. Faraday basked in it, and told himself for a whole week that: he adored her:"-■ He told himself that the little girl was very lovely; that she undoubtedly loved him, as he undoubtedly loved her —for the moment; that Southern wome|i -were much more sympathetic tlisfn their English sisters; and that this summer idyll was very beautiful, and held fresher elements of interest to his jaded senses than any heretofore. For the time being he walked and talked and thought wholly, with and of Roberta ; spent moonlight hours with the romantic child in the garden after dinner; accompanied her to all the Cathedral services, because sacred music and dim stained glass and mystic hush, and kneeling by Roberta in a vast, half-empty twilight space, all appealed to liis aesthetic sense. Together, too, inadequately chaperoned sometimes by Mrs Sim'monds-Smitli, whose' increasing portliness made her very sleepy out of doors in hot' weather, they floated up the narrow river that wound round about St. Medbury, Roberta, in a happy* dream, at the tiller, he lazing on his oars, the two pairs of eyes speaking across to each other very eloquently what ill their hostes's presence they might not voice. Faraday, who had done such things many times before, lived for the same sensations, but to Roberta it was the great, the glorious, the sacred, the ineffable. First Time.

She had come to. St. Medbury straight from a convent school, and - awesomely 'unsophisticated . exeepfr-rby the intuitions of her passionate nature. Till now the intuitions had lain dormant, but they were there, true, potent, ready to awake at the touch of, the first hand that might unlock her heart-gates. Fate willed that Faraday's should be that hand and ; they awoke.

God help her! Charles Faraday's was the hand. He was at this time a slim young man of twenty-six or thereabouts, very tall, with the long, loose, graceful panther litheness that usually' betokens the athlete. ; His appearance, however, belied Faraday. His eyes, too, long-lashed, beautiful eyes, expressive of the very soul of candour and honour, his fine sensitive mouth, his poet tongue, all belied him. Honour with Faraday was an elastic quantity; his poesy, if analysed, would have been found usually to reflect only his own Ego. But the analysis was one which few women ever made, and those few only in the bitterness that followed the learning of the lesson he had taught them. Women of the world were among them. Who, then, shall wonder at little Roberta bowing down, blind with faith, to worship the Idol? Afterwards, when he had, with his own hand, shown her the clay feet, she knew, but even then the knowledge brought no balm to a wound, but rather an added pang that the pedestal was still there in her heart for him, with the unwortliiness of the Idol lipon it mouthing and gibing at her for her own helplessness to cast it out. ' Ic was when Faraday's week's visit had lengthened into a fortnight that Mrs Simmonds-Smith, whose perturbation was growing, spoke to her niece: "Roberta, I've a duty before me

"Yes, aunt," said Roberta, dream-

in o- . " Duties are unpleasant necessities, said Mrs Simmonds-Smith, fanning herself; "but I'm sirch an aggressively moral sort of person that I never can eliirk them with any sense of satisfaction to myself. Are vou listening, child?" , " Yes, aunt," said Roberta, Jiei aunt's last words floating irreverently into the dream. She sighed. _ " I don't believe, said Mrs Sim-monds-Smith more vigorously, sitting up to shoot a sharp glance at the "irl " I don't believe you are. As I said', Roberta, I have a duty before me and I intend to perform it. You are staying here under my protection, dear, and it is incumbent upon me to see that you don't make a little fool of vourself with Charlie Farraday ——" * Roberta started; her olive cheeks flew a danger-signal. "You're so terribly earnest and unsophisticated," Mrs Simmonds-Smith pursued. . "Aunt," said Roberta, "so is- —- "Pooh!" said Mrs Simmonds-Smith briskly. "He is neither, my dear child." He falls in and out of what he calls ' love' on an average about once a month, if not oftener. He is, I "rant, amusing, but it is not the sort of amusement for you. He's that really abominable tiling, a thorough male flirt, and absolutely conscienceless Nature having blessed him vyith a face that is a delight to look at and a pretty gift of tongues why, it's all the "easier to hirn to fool poor littie ••How dare you?" Boberta almost screamed. She jumped up, two scarlet spots flaming in her chepks, her great eyes flashing fire, her hands clenched at her sides. "How dare you? Do you think 1 —believe you? Do you think I I —l don't know ——" "My poor dear child!" said Mrs Simmonds-Smith, thoroughly shocked and startled for ones in her easy life,

"you must" not fall in. love . with. Charlie Faraday. • You must not, indeed; - If I had thought it was more than a. flirtation on either side——" " "It is," said Roberta, swaying' a little, and white now, "a flirtation on neither neither side—no—on neither side— —'' ■ ylie went to the door, walking a. little uncertainly. '"When she reached it, she turned round and stood erect. " Roberta!" said Mrs 'SimmoridsSniitli, struggling up from her deep chair to intercept her. " I love him!" said Roberta. • The poor child flew out of the room, sobs strangling in hor throat, clown through' the sifnlit garden, at the, bottom of which 'on the : lazy river the. moored pvuit rocked gently. Slip sprang in with the swift agility of a wild cat-, and crouching at the bottom of the. craft, laid her arms upon the red cushions' ■ and her black head upon them—madly awake now. There Faraday foilnd her, an hour later, a white heap , upon the red cushions, but with "a beautiful picturesqueness of abandonment in the chaos that struck his aesthetic eye with a certain sense of pleasure', even while he was hurrying across the intervening garden to reach .her.

He' leaped into the punt. She started, shuddered, and looked u l>"My own dear little girl!" he said, putting out his hands ' with' a caress and lifting her. She allowed him to lift her to the seat beside him, and,, leaned her head against his shoulder. The overhanging bank effectually screened them from the vantage point <of windows, and knowing this, lie slipped an arm round her waist. ' (He always made discretion plav a larg part in his affairs, hence his unscathed escapes.) "My dear little girl—what?" ' N—n—nothing! Really, n —n — no-

thing." But as she. spoke .-she opened her big Southern eyes wide' on his face, and in them he read the Woman's soul he had evoked—the woman's soul which had finally supplanted the careless child soul. How charming! he reflected. Then lie (reflected' that matters had reached the stage' when it behoved him to be careful,. i His carefulness, however, was always managed with a considerable amount of finesse; It was not in him to be what is termed brutal. His whole fastidious being would have revolted at the bare suggestion. There, was nothing crude about his retreats. They were always graceful. and came about no naturally that they really seemed indefinable as such. He was already wearying a little of the situation; and of St. Medbury, and his hostess, and the Cathedral services. The itinerancy was: a fever, a I disease, in his blood. . He felt himself ready to absorb , something new, in need of fresh sensations. The two iwe'elis had been very, pleasant, and the little girl beside him had been, a wholly delightful companion, but—but—- — But the tiling .was decidedly beginning to nail. That was the sober truth which there was no blinking. Also, Mrs Simmonds-Smitli this very morning had said soniething aboutßoberta wliich had seemed most alarmingly like an attempt at probing. _ His sensitive discretion had taken fright; valour was a negative quantity with him. Love-making, however, with charmiug little Roberta was easy, moreover it hud become a second . nature with him," and he felt it would meet the occasion now, and smooth the path of the announcement that he had intended: to make of his near departure. As usual - he expressed the love-making more in. the subtle inflection of his well-modulated' voice, in the tender presstsre of the encircling arm. thanhr actual words, which bear repetition. N—ll^—nothing." He .mocked very gently. ".''Oh, my dear/little Berta, f but J./.think..there 'you are t<> tell iiieT""

Her pale face lay against liis shoulder, teairstained, the red lips tremulously vibrating. .Re bent and kissed tliem, and she returned his caress with an abandonment of passion that she showed now, poor child, for the first time, never doubting. With the same absolute faith, she told him, too, . the wherefore of her tears, and waited, confident. ''Your aunt?" he repeated, lightly. "What an absurd idea of hers, wasn't it?. As if there was any possible harm in what has been to me, at least, a wholly . pleasant and delightful friendship. And I hope it has been so to you too, dearest, sweetest little girl." " Why, of course," lie said kindly, "all delightful things come to. an end, don't they? That's part of lie. jest'of that abominable old cynic, Fate. My delightful time must come to an end now, very shortly, I fear, tor 1— I—er—shall1 —er—shall have to'leave St. Medbury to-morrow. Family business, and all sorts of perfectly rotten affairs to see to, the mater is worrying me" —Lady' Faraday had more than once been a useful scape-goat —"to come home to talk matters over with her." Roberta was looking at ,him, astounded, white-faced. '•B —b—but," she stammered, " you'll e —c—come back?"

He sighed deeply. "All, when, I wonder?" lie said pensively. One-never, knows. Of one thing I'm certain, _tliough. 1 shall never forget my visit to charming, quahit old St. Medburv, and the happy fortnight I've spent here —or is it— ? Yes, I declare, it .will be nearly three weeks to-morrow! Time flies so, under perfect- conditions, when one is absolutely and ideally happy, as I own I have'been., One loses all count oritYour aunt has been most kind, really, in letting mo extend a sort of weekend visit into a regular visitation. jSo, I shall never forget it, this delightful fortnight, and my dear little fiiend. Even if we are destined never to meetagain—one never knows —: " "What? What? What? she | almost wailed. She had pulled ner self awav from his arm, and was staring at him/her eyes wide open in blank, anguished, incredulous amaze which she made no attempt to conceal. In a moment there flashed back upon her consciousness disconnected phrases ol her aunt's; phrases • culled from a shrewd worldly wisdom denied to babies such ns she, phrases that, in her bunclness, she had raved at, spurning them—"that abominable thing a thorough male flirt— a flirtation on either sideall the easier to fool poor little - "What do you mean?" she breathed rather than spoke. "Jlt dear little girl," he said, biting his lip in vexed anticipation of • a scene 7 ' that would be really abhorrent to so sensitive a nature as his, wna should I mean ? What is there m what I have said to call for this er—melodramatic attitude? OV J surely er—have not misinterpreted—misunderstood oh! pray get up; i reallv cannot " - She had slipped with one ot her characteristic, sinuous movements uOTn from the seat, and now half knelt, hall crouched in the bottom of the T>nnt, facing him, still" staring with blank eves still striving against incredulity, still all but speechless. Heart- and brain were hammering alike drums, with great bursting throbs that choked her, driving the breath in panting gusts between her parted lips. Faraday raised hi.-'< fine eyebrows now in verv real distress. "Oh, pray get up." he said again, futiley. He stretched out the long white" hands that a moment or two ago had been a caress she loved. She struck at them in fury. "What are vou she panted. I in a voice he hardly Recognised, " What

[ are you saying? Do. you mean that all this time—that all this time—that all this time " - She trailed off into a senseless repetition. • " You're not really going—for efrer—and ever?" She stretched ont to gripping hands.'"But —but; —l.love you!" She fixed her eyes 011 his face, reading it, and read it like an open book- — read, what the child of a fortnight ago could not, have done, but- what to thd anguished ivoman of this moment stood out in letters, of lire; read all the conteniptibleness of him, all the heartlessness, all. the delicate measured the height and depth of- his .utter egoism and blatant 'vanity, and tho.ngh unable in her inexperience to deiine it. yet lelt the full horror deep down in her writhing soul.. Treading' close upon the d.espair .of this first-great love came an uglier- passion of rage—rage . incarnate, rage of-the South, hot as its love, rage that swept over her irrestibly, and shrieked out a terrible, vendetta. ' He had' lnimiliated lier, mocked her, stolen her blind adoration blindly jjiven, and put her aside. j l 'Oh!! you !" she cried. -.' " You—1 you!—and you kissed me arid I kissed you < ■ ! ■/ .I

"My dear little Berta," he inurmured, really at a; loss_ in-face: of |uch unexpected intensity in this pretty child, "you will forget all . this : —nonsense

"Forget!" she said, leaning forward and speaking very quickly, ; " forgi?t ! Never.! . You don't know me-! I, will never forget! . Nijver forget that 1 hate you—now!" A sob broke in ;her throat at the lie. "Never forget that—l'll be revenged! lam no cold cold English girl—to forget. You cl dn't 'know whom you were dealing n ith when you brought this on me. .flow dare you! And I told you I luyecl you — arid—and—l kissed you! /Oil, my God. I can't forget! Oh, if I ha<l only strength to. kill you, I'd do it, I think. No, I don't know 1 would. I hate you!" , j .

She gathered vehemence, •jsfiaring at liini with black eyes distended in her white face. ■<• . j "Oil/' she said, in. a voice • like > a moan, "if I —I —I I Iwd i man to thrash you for it, you volt heartless devil!' 1

She was beautiful in her* fury, but with'the beauty of a tiger-cat gathered for a spring, as she crouched there, swaying a little from six e$ force of compelling emotion. | "Go away!" she said, ; '|go away! Leave me! I've got, some?pride left.. It will come back to me when—--" Suddenly exhausted she flung her arms forward on the cushiaijis, laid her black head on tliem, and 'tcuelt thus, very still. . , ■■.■}■■■ - Quite silently Faraday gilt up and left her. There seemed nothing else to •be done in the face of tlui most uncomfortable development, hey. told himself. ■ / ' ' . ; To a very shrewd, but' eminently tactful, hostess lie explained ®tliat ;a* wire had summoned luni back to, town to-day. In any case he- had made up his niind to tear himself aviaj to-mor-row. But she would understand. He felt uncomfortably that she did. So it fell /that the pride that brought Roberta in' dry-eyed and smiliyg, at teatime, and sustained her .through the. eternity of a half hour, was not called upon to stand the additionaltest of Faradhy's presence: . : In the liiill afterwards,. as she went through, she picked up a. £love he had dropped and carried it away, to her room. The Pride swore l an oath of vendetta over it, and the Love kissed it, 'and cried as it fondled it,- before nutting it away in .a shrine of its own. The Love' cleft deep into the Sicilian heart that could not forget, i Six years after, -when the black-eyed little Sicilian girl and dull old., St. Medbury were- hardly memories, with him. Faraday met the Cambray Stuarts at Brighton. . s .- a . He was" still 'the lover whom many women loved, and - more men despised. During the s.ix | years he had wandered- itinerant and culled much sweetness from many flowers. He had, oil leaving Roberta six years ago, followed a pretty peeress half oyer Europe, find th'e blue eyes had displaced the black in his fickle affections, and between them they nearly managed a eause-celebre. It was discreetly hushed up, however, on one of Faraday's skilful retreats, and he returned home to fall in and out of love with his distracted mother's latest companion. This, too, was now hardly a memorv with him. She "first attracted his .momentarily unoccupied attentions at lunch. She sat at a small table with her husband, a huge, healthy, reddish-liaired young Scotsman, discussing an attractive menu with a vivid interest that seemed somehow to suit her. 'Faraday's table was to their, right, where he had a full and uninterrupted view of a glorious sweep of profile and tliroat and bust. After she had sweptin and sat down,, and begun her lunch, all in a careless, regal, ■ unconcerned way, he ate no more. At last she turned her head and met his eves, and 1 her own, full and black, distended widely for a- moment before the dropping lids: veiled them again discreetly. His vanity gauged the effect of the glance as it listed, and about his shaven upper hp curled a slight, fine smile. An adorable woman ! , ' , ■ As she left lier table she dropped her adorable handkerchief, and he was quick to return it to an adorable hand before her red-haired husband could perform the office. She murmured thanks and trailed ,out leaving with him a faint suggestion, that yet hardly was a memory, in the resonant sweet timbre ol' her voice. . t , lie looked them up in the visitors book and went off to the smoke-room to smoke casual acquaintance with the red-headed young Scotsman through the prolt'er of his own unparalleled cigars, a brand lie specially imported. The acquaintance soon extended, tor Cambrav Stua-rt was a- genial, unsuspiciously good fellow. .That evening the lover sat next to Mrs Cambraj Stuart at dinner. He neglected his soup, feeding on enchantment. Her voice was beautiful so was her profile under the shadowin" black hair and the glorious slender fulness of her perfectly matured figure With the advent of the iish the slight memory his neighbour had evoked came back and puzzled Faraday a- little Through two ensuing courses he pooh-poohed it to himself and then , when the sweets appeared he voiced it in an apologetic question : . "Something like a- memory is troubling me; yet "I could never have forgot ten you had we ever met before "I do not think we ever have, she said, meditatively, resting her eyes on the lie, she was taking him in with a deliberate scrutiny that tried to be cold, but could be fto wily ostensibly. She saw him stouter than six years ago at St. Medbury a pang drove through a Sicilian heart that could not forget—his hair already a lit--Ile thinner on the top, the fine lines of his mouth and chin thickening. Idealism wa« abfn.it from his face now. Laziness and self-indulgence and an intolerable egoism were making of him somethin & grosser. Yet the old pang drove again into her, scorching and searing her, heart and soul, brain and body. But the six years that had developed the pale girl into a glorious woman had taught her also how to dissemble. And so she had lied boldly. "I do not think we ever have."

'•Not —at —at —" he paid, racking his brains.

She held |i6r breath, .Would he re-

member? No,. dear^G-od! —not that not that A sudden enlightenment, not wholly pleasant and a little confused, broke over his face. " "Were you ever at at —St. Medbury?" he asked,.."turning, to her. "I think it must have been She had herself admirably in hand. ••.No, 1 doii't think so," she said slowly: 'Then, lightly, "But - 0110 really forgets trifles," doesn't one? I have such a shocking memory." • " Still, I thought " lie began dubiously, relieved. " Perhaps," - she said, after a pause, "you met my my —'little sister there." ; ';

" Ah!" lie exclaimed. This solve,d a rather awkward problem really quite satisfactorily;' and he hated to pi'obe.

" Ah! that must have been what .was puzzling me. You—you— l er—must have been very much alike—though I see the difference very plainly noiv," She smiled a little wry smile, but her teeth were dazzling, and the bitterness of it was'lost on" him. "Is .she —. er, — with'you? he ventured further.' • .

. ",-S.Jie'. —' is dead," said Mrs Stuart, an . indescribable hardness sweeping over the beautiful face. He looked his pained concern, , and voiced it very gently in his own perfect manner. With the putting aside of a * painful subject he was happily aware that he might, too, put aside that little momentary uneasiness; thiit was assailing him, for what, he . really hardly recollected on the instant—no dou'bt some episode. So the little .sister died? Well, well, he remembered her,- he thought, as rather a rather a pretty little girl. ... - But this woman was. adorable! As he talked to her his low voice raised all the ghosts of the pain and passion she had frantically striven all these six years to lay. She answered very little. That, however, he rather enjoyed. Ego was satisfied, and, as [often; blind.

- Roberta, reawakened, felt in her the old love a lid the dormant fury clashing again. She looked across at her husband's. good ruddy face and prayed that the sight of it might exorcise the quivering demons of the i>ast, but felt fearfully that her prayers would, be of ho avail. She had married, partly in. the mental exhaustion of a reaction following Faraday's departure, partly because her own warm nature was very responsive to any love that assailed it passionately enough. The first man who had wooed her happened to be young, wealthy, and kind, and lie. had made her nearly' happy—lie thought wholly so. ' So had she thought—rGod help her!—so had she thought till now. She drove her teeth into her lip till the blood came. She sat and heard the egoist discourse. She loved him! She realised again all the co.ntemptibility, the' cruelty, the selfishness, the littleness of the man. Yet she loved him!

Then something unprecedented in his smug career, something almost unrealisable, fell upon the itinerant lover. His itinerancy checked, -his- Wanderings fixed, he fell blindly at Roberta Stuart's feet and adored them- and her with o whole,- true, 'first passionate singleheartedness that he had" never before given, nor to any degree experienced. She knew it—was' scheaming for it. So she smiled, a cruel, beautiful smile that curled up the corners of her full red mouth and reflected the venditta that lay always alongside the love, sometimes superseding it, in her heart. . -..

So lie was = bringing it back to her humbly, was he—the gift she had given him, which he had taken and tossed icicle P Bringing it back, full value, lieaped-up jineasur.e. She had no fear for herself She was -strong—strong in the arniohr-' forged from the pride that had "come back to her" - as she had-told him. it would, long ago—and i n the trust* lier htusband ; ever.gave her niost completely. She did not lorget that, with its other occupancy, her Sicilian heart held also her husband's honour.

Good Cam! • When his wife paraded Fartiday's devotion almost ilauntingly before the whole' hotel he only shut his eyes the closer. He said lie knew her. His - psychological insight—though he might have asked the meaning of the term had it been spoken to him—was unerring. Roberta almost wept at what seemed to her the pathos of it. If she could, she would have loved him. The climax,: inevitable with such; a woman and such a man, came iu- the second week of their new acquaintance. She was sitting in the big palm-shaded vestibule of the hotel after dinner waiting for her husband to take her out. It was a. glorious, hot, still night, and they had planned to spend an hour on the pier; many lights, and music upon the water, satisfied a certain undefined craving in Roberta. To her .came Faraday, very slowly, giving himself time to feast his eyes oil the vision of her, in long black dress, with the scarlet silk wrap thrown over .it, her pale cheeks and red lips entrancing under the shadow of black hair. . "You are going out?" he said, coming up to her. "To hear the band," she answered carelessly, smiling at him. "Why do you never let me take you ?" he .said a little recklessly, looking into her eyes, feeling the balance oAliings. slipping. "Always " " Mv husband," she said. I-Ie looked round. They were alone in the vestibule. He slipped his arm under her loosely-opened wrap and put it on her ivaist. . "Roberta!" •„ She looked at him, very still. " Your husband, T{oberta ! What a farce, this! A farce! You do not love him —you love me —me." L . She did not answer, but he felt lier quivering, and her erect head drooped a. little—acquiscent-? .V i n "You love me—me!" he said wildly,/ " and I love you. Love! God. what a poor word for what 1 feel!! I adore vou, worship you with every drop of blood in my veins, with every libre of mv beino-.: I was mad from the first moment 1 saw you We were meant for one another. I could have lulled that cold Scotsman when I knew vou were his. Roberta, Roberta, my dariino- vou will leave him- you will come a\°av with me. We will go togther to the "beautiful South that you • and 1 both love. Together we will wander hither and thither, and forget everything but each other. To-morrow to-night—now, Roberta! She lifted a ghastly lace. He stop-

What? What? she said almost frenziedlv, and swayed rather than voluntarily drew herself away from him. , ■ What? Wlv A repetition of—--0f —he could not remember, and it clict not matter. • 1 llobcrta, my darling!, "I—have —I had," sne saul, changing her tense confusedly, "no man—no man to thrash you for this." He stared, started, suddenly as white 3 She stood in the middle of the vestibule, a wan ghost under the glare , ot electric light, but with a very devil of furv incarnate loosgcl in lit?r bl&zing black eyes. Her bosom dilated, she threw her'head back, gazing at him 1 gazing—-gazing —and looking all white and black with her black gown and hair and eyes and white neck and whiter fnc". and the scarlet wran striking a weird note of startling colour. . Back came a mad recollection fraught now to him with a terrible significance. The floodgates of memory loosed, showed

liim, the black and white little Sicilian wild cat raving at him in the bottom of a led cushioned punt.' - His -pale face - grew ghastly. He '.threw' out/his- hands towards her. stammering brokenly. She smiled. ■" No one—then " ' .

.Cambray. came into the vestibule at that moment humming a snatch of an opera, and stopped dead. _ Roberta went up to him and laid her iace .down against his arm. He droppet! the coat ho wiis carrying, to hold her,, and looked over the back head terribly at Faraday standing there .stanimenng. . . ,

, ".My; darling!" said Cam. " Cam," she .said scornfully, drawin"' herself . erect, "Mr Faraday is urging nie to. visit the South with him. The invitation is for you to decide." . . , c J reH his- head down and kissed Jinn before Faraday's eyes, then .flew trom the vestibule, gasping, her hands pressed over her ears to, shut out the •sounds. She' knew her cold Scotsman.

Twenty niinutes later, having pacified a raying hotel, proprietor, and an aghast staff, Cambray went to her room to look for her. He found he.u flung upon the bed, her black and so/u 1 - let wrap huddled 'round ■ her, her distended eyes looking somewhat vacantly out ' into space.' He bore signs of stress in a blood-streaked face, torn tie, and crumpled collar, but he ' smiled ' the smile'of.a man who liad"done good work and on whom a great calm has fallen after the storm.

He went over to the washbasin and rinsed his hands and face before touching her. ■ .'

v " Wh—wh—what liavo you clone Cam?" she faltered, •• behind him. But she knew!. ■

lje • turned tdimd,'. towelling himself vigorously. ; J "/Never mind, dearest. -I'm going to take you out; and you're not. to worry over anything. Because it's all over." ..

She got up from the bed and clung to him mutely. '■(■ Don't worry, dearest," said honest, blind Cambray, "I won't have you .worry; I shan't say another word to you about it to-night,' except to say that I—l—l'm prbud 'to think," his voice was a little husky,' " that—that —Caesar's wife, you know. And to thank you, darling, for giving it to me to do for you." ■ Roberta, lay back a moment on his, ami, "her eyes half closed, her full red lips trembling yery near his own He bent arid kissed them passionately. ■ They went out together into , the warm still night, and sat on the pier amid a crowd of pleasure seekers, and the, myriad twinkling lights that she always liked dotting and dimpling the dark water below.- She felt Cambray (s faithful" passionate eyes searching her white face, and'set it stiffly like a, mask, and sat mutely, blind and deaf. He kept a protective arm along the back of her chair.

In the pavilion the band was playing Elgar's " Primp and. Circumstance," with- a glorious fanfaronade and blare of inarching music. "Isn't that good, dearest?" Cam was saying. She opened, her deaf ears to listen mechanically, ami' heard it—the storm of violins, , the blare of cornets, the throb of drums, wailing a dirge in a minor key.