A SENSATIONAL CASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9169, 18 August 1908, Page 2

A SENSATIONAL CASE.

By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author o: " The Lady in Black," "An Infamous Fraud," "For Love of Jack," "A Terrib'e Fanny," "The House on the Marsh, etc. etc.

CHAPTER Xl.—Continued. Netelka thought that there was perhups a shade too much camaraderie in his tone; for it was essential the plans that he should have for her the most absolute, nay, a most crushing, resppct. Pie must not be allowed to think that he was near enough to her own age to be able to "talk her over'' to his own views on the gambling-question. "it doesn't count like that, though," she said, with great solemnity. "For a woman of twenty, for instance, is quite ten years older in wisdom than a man of the same a*n. You know that is admitted." "Who admits it?" asked Gerard, ra'her flippantly. " You must admit it," retorted Netelka; "an:! to admit, therefore, that I have the authority of a person nine years older;than yourself." She was not quite satisfied with the deure little look he gave her, but he said "All right," and asked if he should go on with hia story. It was short ard easily told. His father was a man of few domestic tastes, harsh and irritable at home. His mother wa3 an angel, about whom Gerard did riot care to talk much even now. She had died when he, her only child, was ten, snd from that tima until hj was twenty-one, he had been more or less miserable. His father had never married again, but had got his own sister, a harsh and runtanical woman, to keep house for him. Gerard had been taken from school when he wps only seventeen, and had been in the office of one of his father's friends at Middlesborouyh until he reached the age of twentyone. "Then I broke loose," said Gerard, rather savagely. "My father had enjoyed himself in his time, and I was not going to spend all the best yearn of my life in a hole I hated. My father, I must tell you, is one of the richest men in those parts, and t-ere was no need for me to keep my nose to the grindstone. I had a short and sharp tus3le with him, and at lust I got him to consent to my coming up to London to read for the bar. He wouldn't have given I way even than, but he saw that, if 1 didn't come away with his permission, I should come away without it." Gerard was speaking in the dogged I tone of a person with a grievance. Netelka at once stood up for the absent father. "I don't think," she began, with all tbe authority of the nine years' superior dignity to which she had laid claim, "that you have any right to speak as if you were ill-used. N3 doubt your father'kept you to the grindstone,' as you call it, because he thought it best for you. I can understand that thorough'y businesslike habits must be necessary in a man who will some day be the owner of a great deal of property." Gerard shook his head. "I don't think myself that was his chief object," said he; "at any rate, if it was, he defeated his own endi for the experience I had has disgusted me with the desk forever. I don't | care if the whole concern comes to grief or not; I'll never go back to that hole as long as I live."

"Not to see your father?" "1 run up now and then to lee him, and when Ido he just gives a grunt when he sees me and goes on reading his book or his paper. And to show his sense of my deficiencies, he allows me only a hundred and fifty pounds a year to live upon. "A hundred and fifty pounds a year!" echoed Netelka in astonishment.

"Yes, It pays for my boot 1 ? and gloves and there is something left towards neckties."

"'lt ought to make you economical," said Netelka doubtfully. "But

The word was expressive, hut the tone was more ho. Gerard looked at her and then at the hearth-rug. "But it doesn't," said he simply. "My expenditure —in ready money that is, without counting debti —dur ing the last two years has betn about two thousand five hundred a year." "But how," asked Netelka, more shocked than puzzled, though she seemed to be both, "do you manage to spend just two thousand three hundred and fifty pounds mo.e than you have?" "Oh, it's easy enough; too ea?y. in fact. By tha help of the ' muchmaligned Hebrew race, these little things can be done quickly enough--at, a certain price, of course." Netelka drew herself up. Her face had grown grave and rigid. "It's horrible!" she said under her breath. The exclamation did not refer to the story she had just heard, but to one which she read between the lines; of Mr Harrington Moseley's financial assistance to this young fellow, of her husband's assistance to tlvj Jew, of her own involuntary share in the arrangements of these two. "Why horrible?" Netelka made no answer. She got up from her chair and walked to the fireplace, "* here she moved one of the ciandelabra from one side of the mantel to the other. "Is it the candle-light that's horrible?" "Yes," answered she readily. "The draft from the window makes them gutter." "Oh, 1 see." Gerard possessed some of the wisdom of the York County people, and he understood more than he pretended to. He was wise enough also to be satisfied with the explanation the lady chose to give him. Therj was a long at the enJ of which Netelka, who had been occupying her.-e!f with that neverfailing reao me in cold weather, the fire, addressed him again, with some suddenness:

"Have you no sister." "No. Iliad one, but she died—of consumption, I believe. They thought I should go off in that way, too. I'm always being told, even now, that I ought to b 3 . careful." "And are you?" "!)f course not. One may as well die oils way as another. If I am to chooso between living in a hothouse on tt a and toast till I am eighty, and dying at five -and-twenty after enjoying myself thoroughly for four years, I would unhesitatingly choose the latter." "That is very selfish." "How is it more selfish than eigUty years of coddling oneself, and throwing oneself into a panic about every puff of fresh air that reaches one?" "And isn't there a happy mean between those two?" "Not for me. A mean there may be, but not a happy one." "Then you find your happiness entirely in selfish enjoyment?" "Entirely. So does everybody. We're all selfishly intent in getting all ihe enjoyment we can out of life —all, that is, who are not intent on taking the enjoyment out of life for other people. There are only those two classes. Sometimes they overlap, and result in the man who finds his enjoyment in depriving other people of theirs." "Of course, it' 3 amusing to hear you talk like that, but it's all wrong, and you know it. Those of us who don't live for others in any way are mere brutes." "Not at all. Those who live for others, as you call it, find their enjoyment in doing so. They think they are unselfish, but they are nothing of the kind. They are merely satisfying their own instincts. It seems unkind to say so, but I maintain that the unselfishness usually ascribed to your sex is a delusion. It is a pleasure with you ladies to make martyrs of yourselves; \togive up the most comfortable chair and to mend socks until your ayes ache; it gives i you the feeling that you are playing the part of a beneficient Providence to the rudderless creature, man. • Now, isn't that true?" "Perhaps," assented Netelka, smiling. Gerard went on more emphatically ! "The beneficient Providence idea is at the root of all altruism. I sincerely trust, Mrs Milliard," he went on, with a twinkle in his eye, "that I have succeeded in disabusing you of the notion that in trying to 'do good,' as. I believe it is called, to any member of the grosser sex, a woman does anything but indulge the instinct for playing beneficient, Providence to somebody?" But the smile on Netelku's face had gradually faded. She rose from the hearth rug sighing. "T understand, what you*mean," she said very gravely and sweetly, "You desire that I shall not let my form of selfishness interfere with yours. Well, just for to-night, I will try. But I warn you not tu enjoy yourself selfishly over baccarat in this house, or I shall have to erijoy myself selfishly by stopping your selfish enjoyment, or by leaving tl • house to indulge other forms of selfish enjoyment elsewhere." Their eyes met again. An expression of touching seriousness in those of the woman brought a flash of sympathy into those of the man. Gerard sprang up and stood close beside , Netelka, looking suddenly shy. i (To be continued.)