“THE LOVE SPELL.”

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14742, 23 August 1921, Page 7

“THE LOVE SPELL.”

(An Rights Reserved)

BY LADY TROUBRIDGE. Author of ‘‘The Flaw in the Jewel,” “Paul’s Stepmother,” ‘“.The Woman Thou Gavest,” “A Marriage of Blackmail,” “ Breach of Promise,” etc.,.etc. Published, by Special Arrangement.

CHAPTER XII. —Continued. A moment’s glance at Monckton’s averted face convinced lior the interview had done its work, and it was in a i-iui voice that she acked: “Well, Leopold, is it to be peace or war bet ween us two ? Are you to bo my enemy or my son-in-law ?” He turned and faced her; his eyes • were eager, and his face was work: ing. . . _ “Make your ow T n terms,” he said. “If you will give her to me, with her own free will, yt>u shall hear no more of that- other matter! ” chapter XIII. An hour later Lady Studholme turned the handle of her daughtei s door, and, without waiting for the voice that bade her enter, pushed it open and walked in. g Tire,girl was standing in her white silk -» dressing-gown, and her loose hair was falling over her shoulders. She was pale and troubled-looking, and her look of surprise at her mother’s entrance showed that Lady Studholme had not that fond habit of so many mothers of coming in late for a goed-night kies. The girl felt that something unusual was on foot, and her heart beat as her mother closed '-he door carefully and set her candle down on the. table nearest her. Then she •swiftly crossed >:ho room, and Veronica saw that she was excessively pale, and that, her face seemed drawn “Yfhats the matter ?” she asked. “A. . t you well ?” • • o,” answered Lady Studholme. “l am not well, but that doesn’t matter; I have other things to think of far more important. To begin with, I am worried about you. You are not treating me fairly, Veronica, because you arc keeping, back from me something I ought to know.” j Her words wont home, and with-a swift feeling 'of remorse Veronica caught one of the slim, jewelled hands in her own, and looked eagerly into idle fair, inscrutable face. I “I know, mother,” she-said, penitently. “I have, something to tell you, and I’ve been trying all day long to find a chance of saying it, it is so difficult as v:e are never alone, and .somehow or other 1 felt afraid.”

“I can quite understand that,” said Lady Studholme, “i'or you knew very well that, in all probability, I should not approve of the silly entanglement into wiiicn y°u were drifting.” Veronica, sighed. It came to her in- that moment, with overwhelming force, how little in common there was between her mother and herself, and the feeling filled her with a dull remorse, for it appeared to her as if it must be that she herself was to blame for such a state of tilings. j The-moment that had brought them together now was one of the most sweet and wonderful ttliat could c-ome into a girl’s life, and, as if in a hash, she realised how her confession should have -been made; it should have been whispered to a sympathetic ear, while her head rested on her mother’s heart, and soft arms wrapped her round; it should have been understood before it was spoken and each faltering word met half way. For a moment she felt motherless, then she gathered herself together, and spoke. “lie—Paul —loves me, mother; he tcld me so to-day.” “Indeed,” said Lady Studholme; “then he acted very wrongly to begin. with. You are far too young to have been approached in this way. If Paul Meredith had ‘the folly and the audacity to fall in love with you, he should at least have had the sincerity to have come to me, and to have found out my wishes beforehand.”

Veronica Said nothing. A dull Bense of misery came over her. “To begin with, Veronica,’ went on her mother, “you must remember that you are in a slightly different position . from that of. other girls. Studholme, fond as he is of you, has, from the first, determined to leave you entirely in my hands; he recognised that, being only your stepfather, the entire responsibility must rest on my shoulders. .Some men grow, in course of time, to look upon their stepchildren as almost their own; but in this case, to speak frankly to you, there was no such foel’ng. On the contrary, it seem-•-d to him at first that "your very existence, and the time and attention vou demanded at my hands, was a bar between us, and it is only of late years that this feeling has died away. You are, therefore, wholly and* entirely dependent on me, and vou should recognise this by taking no step of this kind without finding out my wishes first.” “Why have you never talked like this to me before?” asked the girl, a flood of<j new thoughts and ideas rushing over her. This, then, was the explanation of the feeling of being unloved and unwanted that had bo constantly and so inexorobly pur-

sued her in the midst of her gay, brilliant surroundings. “There was no occasion to do so,” answered Lady Studholme. “I always thought I could trust you.” . Veronica looked up indignantly. “I’ve done nothing untrustworthy,” she said, “and even if Paul had spoken to you first, it would only have meant a delay. Matters must have been the same in the end. “It would have saved you some pain,” said her mother, significantly- “ But, mother, what is there against him? He’s a gentleman, and a good man, and he says he has plenty for-us both. Surely, mother, you can’t object ito him?” Lady Studholme laid her hand upo:?. her shoulder, and drew her almost roughly forward. “Do yo.u consider yourself in love with this person ?” she demanded. “This second-rate solicitor, who is not of your world, and who would never have come across you at all if I had not askea him out of courtesy into my house.” “I do love him,” said Veronica. “I love him better than anyone in the world.” ’ ). “Baiter than me, I suppose?’ said her mother, angrily. Veronica made no reply, but her silence answered effectively. ‘‘Now, look here, Veronica, ’’ continued Lady Studholme. “It is all verv well to treat me to that kind of obstinate silence, but the point- I have just raised is one on which everything depends—your whole life and mine.” “Mother!” cried the girl, startled by a sinister note of reality she had never heard before in those sweet, superficial accents. “It’s true,” said Lady Studholme violently.- “If you persist in putting the flimsy feeling you profess for this man above, the love and the duty you owe to your mother, then all I have to say to you is that you will ruin me completely. I’ve done everything in the‘world for you; I’ve sacrificed myself from the time you .were a baby; you have shared in all the splendour and the- power and the brilliance of the life I have provided for you, and now I want to know if you have sufficient gratitude in you to take your share in a (trouble that has come upon me, and that threatens to lay my life in ruins. For Heavens sake, child, don’t answer at random, for more, far more, depends on it that you can ever imagine.” / As she spoke she had been walking about the room, pacing backwards and forwards, and working herself up into a frenzy of feeling. All the humiliation and the degradation of the past few weeks, the blighting anxieties and the piteous inward despair of them, let loose at last. Her face was ashen, and tears poured down her cheeks.

Veronica rushed i’:o her and threw her arms round her. “Of course I will help you!” si)© cried. ‘‘l did not mean that I would ever dream of putting you aside for haul; I only meant that the love I have for him is different from any other. Oh! surely, mother, you must understand this?” Lady Studholme -stopped in her agitried walk, and seized the girl by the wrist. “If you marry Paul Meredith I am ruined,” she said, “utterly and irretrievably. Listen to me.” Still holding Veronicas wr:st with the desperate tightness of a drowning woman clinging to the hand of a rescuer, she began to speak; slowly at first, then as she got deeper and deeper intoLer subject, eloquent words and phrases came to her, and helped her to clothe the sordid, terrible facts of her predicament. Yet it was black enough even then, and as Veronica at las* understood she trembled and shrank away.

Lady Studholme noticed the gesture, and, turning from her, she flung herself into a low basket-chair and sat staring in front of her, sullen despair stamped on every beautiful feature, ’in that moment she hated the man who had forced her to lower hersejf for ever in Veronica’s eyes, and it seemed to her as if her reputation was but a small thing compared to the look of suffering she had herself stamped on that young, innocent face.

A moment later Veronica came to her, and, kneeling at her feet, looked up into her face. “How can I help you?” she asked. “Supposing that I am willing to do so, what can Ido?”“Can’t you see?” said Lady Studholme. “Don’t you understand? Leopold Monckton is madly in love with you; that, at least, you do know, but what you perhaps hardly underhand is that that very fact gives you an absolute power of saving me. If you marry him the debt is wiped out and cancelled; more than that—for the money is the least part of it—you will keep his mouth ?:hut for ever. He is not likely to ruin the mother of his wife.”

She felt as she spoke the hands clutching hers turn icy cold, and a look of blank despair weep across the sweet face uplifted to hers. “Is there no other way, mother?” “If tliere were,” cried Lady Studholme, with a burst of genuine feeling, “do you think I should ask you to do this ? But I do ask you, Veronica; I beg and implore of you to do it, and to do it for me. I might belittle your sacrifice by telling you that the man I choose i'or you is infiitely better fitted to be your husband in the eyes of the world than Meredith, buLl don’t say this. I sweep all that aside, and merely ask you if, in return for what you owe

me, you will give up this girlish fancy of yours, and try instead; to love the man I have chosen for you’.*” Veronica looked away from her mother through the tiny casement windows to the moonlight might obscured by intersecting trees. She spoke as if to herself,, but Lady Su-ud-holme heard the words. “I wonder what my father would have wished me to do?” Lady Studholme started with a painful sensation of surprise. “Your father?” she faltered. “Yes, my dead fafher. You’ve reminded me, mother, to-night, that lam fatherless, but still he must have thought and cared for me once and you knew him, and could tell me if you would what you think he would have- said to me. Did he love you very clearly, so dearly that nothing, xnit even his little girl’s happiness, would have counted in comparison with yours ? Tell me that much, and it may help me.” She held up her hand as she spoke, on which gleamed a curious ornament, part of a broken ring, and the pearl which had once united it with the missing portion. “This is all I have of his,” the girl continued; “this and your memories.” Had she watched her mother’s face she would have seen an indefinable expression of horror and distress creep over it, but she was gazing at the curious ornament given her by her mother in her childhood, and did not pbserve it. “Yes, he care'd about me,” answered Lady Studholm, with an effort. “But do not think of the dead, child, think of the living.” Veronica kissed her ring. “I will think of them both,’ she said. “Mother, it is a dreadful thing you are asking me to do, and if I do it this man must understand that I don’t love him. I cannot sham love, that’s impossible, and you must see Paul —. I could never find words to tell him what would make him hate me.” “I will do everything, child, everything, if you will oniy promise to leave yourself in my hands.” “I promise,” said Veronica, and her voice sounded as thin and toneless as if it came from far away. CHAPTER XIV. There is nothing more sickening to the heart and soul than the following out of life’s ordinary routine when everything in life itself' seems to be going wrong, and this was the feeling experienced in full force by nearly all the members of Lady StudholmeVriver party. Meredith awoke with a dull sense of disaster that- intensified as the events of the day before came into his mind. He was surprised to find with what intensity he loathed Leopold Monckton; to' such an extent did he dislike the man, and all connected with him, that the scene of yesterday became unbearable to dwell on, even in bis thoughts. !

What an ass he had been not to let the man alone! He had acted as his nature led him to, in a fashion fundamentally dishonest and unsound; yet why should he, Mersd’tli, have constituted himself his accuser He had done no good, and if Lady Studholme’s warning had'" been based on fact the net result of his work would be to throw the girl he loved into the arms of his rival. These .thoughts were poor company during his dressing, and became so odious to him that he turned with a certain relief to his natural optimism, and told himself Jihat he might be making much out of little . One glance at face un deceived him, , for she avoided his eye, ate nothing, and looked as white as a sheet. The whole morning was occupied with a fruitless effort on Meredith’s part tS get a few words with her, and it seemed to him that the whole world conspired to prevent him. It vfas not*until a fitful morning had been swept aside by tbe golden sunshine of a glorious afternon that he had his chance, and wandering into the drawing-room to be alone with his own (thoughts—for the garden had claimed all the others—found that Veronica had done the sarne. , , The blinds were drawn down to keep out the scorching sun, and had turned the room into a lovely / green twilight, in the pleasant dimness of which, blue, white, and yellow flowers stood out with a subdued radiance. “Alone,” he said, glancing at her. “Thank Heaven! Now I can'have a word with you.” , > Veronica rose from the sofa; she had been sitting there with her face pressed against the cushions, trying to keep back the tears that seemed begging to be loosed from their prison. She was feeling utterly, unspeakably miserable, and anxiety and longing, and the consciousness of coming disaster, hung over her like a cloud. To be Continued. —L.S. 10.