Lady Marjorie's Love

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 31 March 1913, Page 2

Lady Marjorie's Love

(OUR SERiAL

By Carl Swerdna Author of "To the Uttermost Fart Ling," "A MereOeremony," "A Fight lor Honour," Etc.

CHAPTER XIX (Continued.) "I beg'your i>aJ'don —not at all. At that period of my life it would have been dangerous to mention the word in my hearing." "And I dare say she was an old woman?"—-in scornful interrogatory. "I beg your pardon again—certainly not! ° She was not a day over five and thirty, and I adored her with the deathless and desperate devotion of seventeen." "How ridiculous!" Marjorie's hp give its favorite little contemptuous twitch. "You wanted your ears boxed!" . . , "Precisely the lady's opinion—.she boxed them. I doubt _if I have ever been more astonished in my life." "Sho served you right!"—loftily. "She observed that it served me right. Also that she "considered >*' the most entertaining young noodle she had ever had the fortune to encounter. Looking hack dispassionately from my present un romantic standpoint I'm bound to acknowledge that she wais probably tight:" '•'l shiould think so! The idea! A hoy like that!" She laughed, looking u/p with unsynvpathetically dancing eyes. "What fun!" she said. ~',Anc! 'did,you "really see her?" did —ateo a selection of ilier'family'. When I mention that, and also that with a lamentable lack of delicacy of feeling she insisted upon recalling, for the benefit of her husband, the painful circumstances of the past, you won't wonder that I call the experience a harrowing one." "Did. she?" "She did. She said that she often recalled my proposal, for she had never laughed more in her life." I don't, wonder hut that is the way with heaps of boys"—with a de hghtfiul .little air of. maturity and suneriority. "You nwi.st laugh yourself when you think of it now. Perhaps your second was kinder?" sho suggeisted gaylv. "Was she?" x "Mysecond love? Aih. I could tell you plenty about her! iMay I?" The change in his voice was not much, the chance in his eyes as little and the movement which he made toward her -was the least of all ; ;Trat. trivial as they were, they were disquieting:, bringing iinstantly to her mind what she had so resolutely tried to forget—"that preposterous nousense" of Fenella's. It was as preposterous as ever, and she was as sure of its absurdity a.s ever, but she drew back .with one big leap of her heart and with all her pulses fluttering. "No thanks! One's, second love is always so dreadfully unromantic—-to make up for the first, I oppose. The third or .fourth' is- hotter, perhaps. Don't you think so?" "Third? Fourth? Do you take me for a, Mormon ?"

"How absurd!" She ha<f recovered herself now and was smoothing Jack'.s fat white shoiildeiy 1-aying her cheek against his head. "Don't you think wo had better stop talking nonsense?" /Now, although the dowager countess had been tints totally forgotten by her granddaughter, it chanced that Marjorie had not been forgotten- by the dowager countess. Getting tii-ed presently of trying to go to sleep and failing, and getting still irtore tired of contemplating the handsome, motionless figure of Lady Marlingford, some, what ostentatiously absorbed in a flame-colored magazine, the old lady's thought reverted to the passionate little figure which had rushed out of the i-oom in a whirl of rage an hour or two before. No doubt the saucy little minx wa.s somewhere, either crying or sulking. The dowager, being at once fidgety and irate, got mi. | shook out 'her brocaded shirts, took up the ivory-headed stick',' without which .iihe never moved indoors or out and approached the curtained arch leading; to the hall. The little minx must be brought to hear reason then and there, and to -understand that Ireland only wa s her future destination. "Sure it's a. little fool she is to think of Eleanor Paget at all!" the old lady muttered!, ,-withi a nod or two. "N'o, it's to me own home in Tipperary my Lady Marjorie wil go, and it's thankful enough she ought to be for the chance of it. Eleanor Paget, indeed! Sure it's a; pretty thing if her own father's mother isn't to do as she likes with her!" The dowager might have continued her soliloquy, but that there struok upon her ear from the other side, of the curtain the ripple of a yoft laugh. It was iMarjorie's voice, and it had. no sound o ftears in it —quite the contrary. The dowager softly pulled aside the curtain and stared with all her might. The big sofa was full in her range of vision, and shrewder, more pitilessly piercing eyes than her ladyship's never shone and twinkled yet. She had. never set them on Gerard Barrington in her life before, but she knew him as instantly as if she had bee nliis own mother. The dowager, as proud an old woman as ever wore a coronet, fairly bristled with indignation. "Sitting close enough to her to

I count her eyelashes, and she looking down to let him do it, I'd like to be told what it is ' ye're whispering about as though butter wouldn't melt in the mouths of ye Ah, plays, is it?" "It must be lovely!" Man jorie said with a sigh. "I should love.to'see her play that!" "I am sure'you would. I should like to take you!" "Sure it's eat her ye'd! like to, Judging by the looks of ye!" commented the dow.ager . . . "I (suppose, though, that I never shall see her now that I'm going abroad." i "Tt's Ireland ye a,re going to before ye are a week older, and' it's tight enough .up .that-■>,l'll shut ye when I get ye thei*e. I promise ye, my lady !"■ murmured the incensed watohei'. 1 "Oh, don't soy that! Never i,s a long day. To-morrow, has a trick of bringing u« plenty of things that we don't expect, you know," Barrington said, in his cheerfullest tone. "I ventiire to prophesy 'that you will see her in all her best roles yet." . "I venture to prophesy that to-mor-row will bring ye something that ye don't "expect', my young man!" said the dowager viciously, fromi her concealment.- "Sure it's kiss her he'll have' the impudence to next, and that under-thoa-eyes of me!" | But the feelings of the enraged old woman .were spared this last outrage. A clock, standing hidden away in a dark corner of the shadowy hall, began to strike out the hour in loud, I clanging strokes. Recalled to reality, the two on the sofa rose, i "I had no idea it was so late!" Marjonie said, in an., astonished tone. "What a long time we must have been talking! Good night, M'r Barrington!" "Good night. Lady Mar jorie! Happy dreams, shall I .say, of your favorite actress in the best of her .roles?" . " "Good night." "I shall never see her, and I shal 1 never see anything or any one else that I ca.re for, 1 think, when-once I have left Castle Marling," thought Mar jorie. heavily as she mounted thf stairs. "Bless her sweet little heart!" Barrington said to himself tenderly, watching the slender black figure and. ( the drooping brown head until they passed otit- of his sight. ( "Very pretty, upon my life! Sure it's in bedlam that Fenella Marlingfor.d deserves to be!" cried the dowager, dropping the curtain. I _

CHAPTER XX. The dowager countess' wrath -was of the type wliicih grows the hotter and angrier for nursing. Her bell ivas pealing a good hour before the usual time iii' the morning, and -she rated) her unlucky . : niaid during her long andi elaborate toilet with such unusual loudness, acrimony, and venom that she was audible in her grand-daugh-ters 'room, causing poor little Marjorie to tremble in her shoes and wonder what could.be the matter with her grandmother now. (To be Continued.)