LIGHTS & SHADOWS

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18890, 15 October 1929, Page 16

LIGHTS & SHADOWS

STAR’S ” NEW SERIAL

BY

EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS.

CHAPTER Xl. (Continued)

So she turned now and she smiled at Gerald Briggs, and she held out her hand. “All right,” she said, “let’s be friends. I am sorr}’ 1 if I hurt you. But you hurt me. You took a -wrong view ot me when I was alone in Boulogne, and one never likes to be judged in the wrong way.” The young man took her hand and gripped it so tightly that he made her wince. “Sav, Elizabeth,” he said, and his voice ’ shook as he spoke, “you don’t know what it means to me to have you kind. Oh, my dear, there isn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for you! I know 1m not much to look at, but oh, I do love you, Elizabeth ! I shall never love anybody else.”

“You are a silly boy,” said Elizabeth in the lightest way possible. His adoration was by no means unpleasant to her, and the more quickly the thought flashed through her mind, the more surely she came to the conclusion that to send this young man and his millions out of her life would be the act of a lunatic.

So they drove on round the Park, but after a while she told him she must go back to her home, and he got out of the car, and he stood looking after it as she drove away.

To herself Elizabeth laughed a laugh of satisfaction and power. After all, he certainly didn't belond to that part of the world in which she intended to reign as a queen; but until she did get this settlement carried through, she would be wise to build up a safeguard for herself, and Gerald Briggs’s money might come in very useful. As the door of the house was opened to her, she was met by Hester, a very flustered and almost frightened-looking Hester.

“My dear, I’ve got something I’ve got to say to you,” Hester Slayde said, only waiting until the butler had disappeared down the passage. She drew Elizabeth into a room on the. ground floor, a kind of library. “I don’t knowexactly how you’ll take it, my dear,” she said, “but there’s a lady waiting upstairs for you in }-our boudoir. She’s a very beautiful lady, but not young . and, my dear, she says”—Hester caught her breath rather quickly—“she says as she’s your mother.”

The heart of Elizabeth Charlbury stood still for an instant, and then began to beat with most unpleasant rapiditj*. Her mother! Of late she had drifted entirely away from any thought of this danger coming into her path. Her mother! She sat down suddenb', and she turned so white that Hester fussed about her.

“Oh, my dear, I’m that sorry. I’d have sent her right away, but you see I didn’t know what to do. I . . .

I . . . because . . . because, Miss, you see I recognised her.” Elizabeth looked up into Hester Slayde’s agitated face.

“You recognised her! IIow?” “Well, my dear, I’ve never so much as told you, but in that there box with all your father’s letters to my dead mistress there was a picture too of his wife. And though she’s a bit changed, she ain’t changed that much I couldn’t recognise her right away,” “DicJ she sepd in. her name?” asked Elizabeth in a low voice.

“Yes, Miss, she did send in her name, but it isn’t the same name as yours. See, this is her card,” said Hester. And she held out a visiting card which she had crumpled in her hand. Elizabeth took the card. On it was printed, “The Countess Paulina Ninetti,” and in the corner an address in Paris. How long she sat holding that crumpled card in her hand Elizabeth never knew, but she was conscious not onlv of great anger, but of a sickening sense of dread. Though her father had never told her anything about this marriage, she had been shrewd enough to know that it had not been a very happy one. And here in the very start of her career, when her foot was on the threshold of success, this unknown mother had suddenly turned And just for a few minutes she hesitated, then throwing back her head,

she got out of the chair, and with a little hard laugh, she pushed Hester aside. “You say she’s in my boudoir?” she queried. “Well, leave me to deal with her, Hester. She had not the slightest right to come here, and I mean to tell ■ her that and to send her away.” [ CHAPTER XII. [ The Countess Paulina ‘Ninetti was - sitting in Elizabeth’s own pet chair. She was smoking a cigarette in a very ; long amber cigarette holder, about - which there was a flash of diamonds. . On her first glance Elizabeth realised l that she was face to face, not only 3 with a danger, but with a very strong j and powerful nature, perhaps even - stronger, and far clever and more 1 sutble than her own. i Just for an instant she stood leaning against the door before she entered the i- room.

And the mother and daughter looked at one another, appraising each other very swiftly.’ Then the Countess laughed. “Well, my dear, she said, perhaps you are surprised to see me?” Elizabeth answered her hotly. “Yes, I am very much surprised. And I don’t understand why you have come.”

tier mother laughed again, a very charming laugh, put the cigarette holder to her lips for a second or two, then as she blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke, she said: “I should have imagined you were not a fool, Elizabeth. I have made it my business to know a good deal about you, and it strikes me you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, my dear. Y’our present position is quite sufficient to prove that, fact. You are very like me, Elizabeth,” the Countess added in the same breath, “very like what I was when I was younger. And do sit down, my dear. I have a good deal to talk over with you, and I hate people moving about in a restless fashion.”

Elizabeth turned on her with passion.

“You can have nothing to say to me that I want to listen to,” she declared. “I repeat, you have no right to come here! ... I don’t understand why you have come! Having deserted me and left me all these years to struggle for myself, you might have left me a little longer.”

“That’s quite true,” said her piother quietly, “but, as a matter of fact, I intend you to be very useful to me. If I have left you all these \-ears, and you say it as a reproach, you must realise that that was your father’s will. When we separated, he took you away from me and he declared that I was never to have anything to do with you. Well, to be quite frank, I never wanted to have anything to do with you! I had my position tp .think nf, my career on the stage, and as I was a very young woman, I did not intend to be known as the mother of a grow-ing-up girl.” “You are on the stage?” said Elizabeth quickly. “My father never told me that.”

“I don’t suppose your father ever spoke About me at all, or very rarely, did he?”

“It was not a subject which he carecj to discuss,” said Elizabeth with a sneer.

She scarcel> T knew why she had obeyed her mother’s orders. Now she had sat down, and she had taken her hat off and flung it ori to a couch near bj’. “Yes, you are really very like me.” said the Countess, screwing up her eyes. “And yet we are different.” She looked at a distance young, but she was extremely well made up. Her complexion was obviously artificial, but there was about her a languid grace, and a line of beauty ■which, against her will, Elizabeth was bound to recognise.

“I don’t know that you are quite as attractive as I was, because you see, my dear Elizabeth, you do npt possess any heart. You are what you look, a Very cold, self-possessed, curiously hard young woman.” (To be continued.)