CHAPTER I.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 May 1901, Page 633

CHAPTER I.

A PICNIC. *|pj|jjS||lNGr ! The curtain rises on a lovely <^=Ri New Zealand gully zig-zagging ji IJjr between limestone hills. Under s=§j'3 the shade of native bush, a brook runs, jumping, gurgling, and tinkling among the mossy boulders. Here and there the sun's rays force their way through the foliage, casting chequered shadows on the rough path, and lighting up into vivid green the ferns which bound it. Over all, there is an atmosphere of calm, rest, and peace. On this hot January afternoon, a young man and a girl are busy building a fire on a level bit of sward. She, on her knees, takes the sticks which he has collected, puts them on the fire, and blows the flickering flame. A few paces off a cloth is spread, with every requisite for a good tea. She is about to rise, and he raises her by the hand. " You need not squeeze my hand so hard, Mr. Herbert." "Attribute it to involuntary muscular

action, Miss Raymond," replies the swain, beneath whose ardent gaze the girl casts down her eyes. Madge Raymond had volunteered to prepare the meal, and Eustace Herbert was only too glad to stay and help her. The rest of the picnickers had paired oil: after the manner of their kind. All but one, a young girl who sat by tho stream in a secluded nook, silently weeping. Prom time to time, she looked wistfully in the direction of the column of blue smoke which rose from the fire. Presently, she dipped her handkerchief in the water, and bathed her hot eyes. Then she rose, and wandered sadly and aimlessly under tho trees. Madge had spoiled the day to which Kva Trowbridge had looked forward with so much pleasure. "Where have you been, dear?" asked the former, as the laggard at last put in an appearance amongst the rest of the party, who were doing full justice to the tea. " I have been resting in the shade. I was tired."

" You look so." A malicious smile flitted across the face of the queen of the day, as she handed her poor rival a cup of tea. So might Queen Ealinor have smiled as she tendered the poisoned goblet to Pair Rosamond. Eustace Herbert looked guiltily, first at one, and then at the other. He felt that he had not done the right thing in inviting Eva to the picnic, and then deserting her for Madge. And then, as he contrasted

them, he felt that Eva could never be the same to him that she had been before he met Madge — tall, stately imperious Madge, with her warm olive skin, her wealth of raven tresses, her aquiline nose, and her firm, exquisitely-chiselled mouth and chin.

She ought to have been an empress, instead of a linendraper's assistant, and he felt his heart throb as he thought how this goddess had condescended to him.

Poor little blue-eyed, golden-haired Eva ! She had not a single regular feature. But when the tender eyes lighted up with animation, and the small, sensitive mouth broke into a smile, men thought her " doosid pretty," and liked to talk to her.

She did not smile during that meal, nor, indeed, for the rest of the evening. The drive back to Napier under a glorious sunset sky, succeeded by the enchantment which moonlight threw over hill and plain, was a thing to be lovingly remembered by all the rest for many a long day. But all this availed her nothing, for Eustace and Madge sat together. In her lonely lodging that night, Eva took from a drawer a photograph, and kissed it. Then she sobbingly whispered to it the seci'et of her heart, which, perchance, she could not have brought herself to confide to any living being — not even to the loved one who had been taken from her. " Oh, mother, pity me ! I loved him, and I think he loved me, till she came and took him from me. And now lam indeed alone ! " The hawk had sorely torn the dove.