Our Serial Story

Thames Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 10380, 6 December 1912, Page 3

Our Serial Story

THE HEIRESS OF THE SEASON.

(By Sir William Magnay, Baronet)

" I have got into all my London feelings, which comes to me immediately I pasa Hydepark Comer, I am heartless, selfish, insolent, worldly and frivolous Pardon the vices inevitable'in tha greater of cities." — Sydney Smith. CIHAPTEIR 111. "You Sphinx 1 Town tis iruliniug you. The facie was so familiar, yet I could not think where I had seen it" "On the river path, by Fulmer's End." "Trust you for guessing—or is it cicwistelieinice? The jgreat Mr Charl©* roy! Haive you renewed your acquaintance 1" "No. Although we haVe just missed meeting more than once.". "You might have told men—as it turns out." "My deair Maud, whlat will you say when I. tell you that, until I came to town 1, I did not know myself who the man Was?" "Kate! How frightfully improper." "Bouse-maidish to a degree." "Wouldn't he tell you?" . 0"h, yes. But I never bothered to know. He told mie things by which I might halve gues&ed it, had I lived in the world amdl not in Sleepy Hollow. He had an idea, I knew, never talking into account my rural ignorance." "It is Very sad, Catherine. No introduction!" "Nothing 'eto-, oominonpJaioe. You must remember it was befofe my roomatnioe wiaa coated with London dust. All the same our introduction, although irregular to the Verge of mop manners, was the most natural thing in the world." "No one oould ever call you prim, Kate." 'Trim! Does any one stand on ceremony with a runaway horse?" "A runaway mlam." "Maud, if you know more about the affair" than I do—*" "I won't interrupt you again." "I met a horse trotting, down Cbusin's Lane with ears laid back guiltily and quite ready to break into a gollap. Being then no more than a country bumpkin:, I made nothing of oaifcohing the bridle and leading him foaiold the way he dame, expecting every step to bring me lin sight of his rider lying in the road with concussion of the brain —otherwise, why walsn't he in pursuit? No one wa'si to be seen. However, when I h'adl towed' the animiail to tihe turn in the rolald past the gaitie leading to the plamtaitiion abbvo i the riverl—-you know 1 ■ Nosse Pomt —- I 1 heard some one trampling through the leaves and sticks on the other side of the hedgie. I stopped. Then I heard an exclamation in a man's voilcte, the gate, opented, slammed, ainld a soliloquy followed which I will not repeat Enough that it-* showed the ownership of the steed. I led him batek round the corner to the ! maatu who was standing in the middle of the road and jumped round on hearing us." "Mr Charleroyf'. "So it appears from the shop windows. 'Is this your horse?' I. asked!. It wlas his horse. He looked as though hie thought I might have been 1 hiding the animal for a) practical joke; so I had to explain. 'Plucky of you to stop him.' 'Not at all,' I said. 'Nothing is easier than to stop a horse if he is in his senses andl you know how to do it.' He looked rather curiously at me: the look, you know or probably you idon,'t kn'o'W—toen), these f(ashion- i aible men give a girl whom they fancy to bo a little out of the ordinary rum. 'I am tremendously obliged! to you,' he said. 'I don't know what I! should have done if you hadn't held hdmi up.' " 'He Would probably have been a* Dumsage by this time,' I suggested). Of course I ought, not to have said anything, but walked off with a bow; still, you know, there is' not too much incident in life my dear old Level Barton. You say I am not prim. The man was a; gentleman— I could see that—and we were 'both laughing; so, instead 1 of walking off like an' old maid, I lingered. "Perhaps you can tell me," he said, 'whom this plaice belongs to.' I told him. Then he explained how' hia horse came to be running aWay. 'I dismounted to ruml through _ the trees and have a peep at the river fastening Plunger, as I thought, securely to the gait©; but he knew better—tf am not going to be angry with him, though.' Then, as he indined towards compliments, I promptly shiuitJ him up, amd he had to fall back upon qUestionia about the fishing, amd so on.. Of course, I oould not lielp noticing then that th'eire wtofl a gtreait deftl of quiet ptvwehr abo"uiti ftihef mm —no wondetr 11— and I suppose that fascinated #ma Rlatte differentt. from Frank Sh'arnbro!olks and Lionel Niappers, and all that bucolic crew who think a woman likes to be bored for a while every Bight aibout a. rat hunt. This mlam was a siporbsmlanl but I coulc see he was something more. H« asked aboait the hounds and th< shooting and all'tihe time there waf somethinjg in his manner which pre vented-my reseniting the catechism He mentioned quite incidentally fcha.l he was iti the House, and that wtti some excusie, for it seems part a the duty of M.P.'s to pick up in ' formation in! out-of-the-way places. (To be Continued.)