The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-09-18 00:00:00

"So I do, Noel, dear, and it was kind and like you
to think of it. How did you get it? I did not know
anyone had a portrait of my mother in Engl-ind."
" Ah, how I came by it is a secret. I found a
benecent fairy to help me."
"I'm very grateful to your fairy. Stoop your head
and be paid, Noel ;" and he bent his lips to hers and
took the kiss she gave him so daintily.
And again she murmured something about her dear
mother, and touched the ivory with her lips; but he
felt there was no true warmth in her words, and be
never saw the picture again. Beryl shut it up in her
desk, and declared it was too precious to leave it
about for everyone to handle who liked. Too precious
to be seen, apparently, for she never looked at it her-
self till she showed it to Mrs. Dalton.

"It's a wonderful likeness," that lady said. "A
little younger and fresher than I ever saw the poor
dear, but very like. I think if I were you, I
would let it lie on my table, and be seen now and
then."

"I can't bear

I can't," said the heiress, sharply.
to look at it."
Mrs. Dalton said no more. Miss Atherstone was not
quick to take advice from anyone, not even as old a
friend as herself.

Mrs. Dalton seemed in a very weak state of health
—at least so Mrs. Atherstone opined—for she was
easily startled. The day after her arrival at the
Grange, Beryl took her to visit her cousins at the
rectory, and there they met Mr. Carson, who was full

_
of joy at the prospect -of his son's return.
"In less than a month he will be here," he said, to
Berri. "He sailed in the Psyche, the ship you came
over in."

Beryl turned very pale, and gripped Mrs. Dalton's
arm very tightly. She had not mentioned Graham
Carson's name to the old lady yet, and speaking of him
always affected her 'powerfully. It seemed to bring
the whcie miserable time back to her, and she did not
doubt Mrs. Dalton would evince some emotion at hear-
ing it. But for his advent at Melbourne, she might
have had her grandchild, poor Ursula, with her now;
and Beryl looked anxiously at her to see how she
would bear the first mention of his name.

'We are speaking of my son, madam—my poor
boy," the lawyer said, turning courteously to her.
(3 You will sympathise in our happiness I know,
when I tell you that he is safe and on his road
home.

" Safe ! Coming tome !"
They could see that her lips formed the words. though
scarNly any sound issued from them, and her face
grew terribly rigid and pale.
"No, I am 'hot ill, thank you," she said, in answer to
Mrs. Athorstone's alarmed enquiry, for, indeed, her
face looked like that of a corpse. "I am agreeably
surprised, I can assure you. I heard of Mr. Carson
being missing, of course, and 'feared—like many
others, I have no doubt—that he was dead. The sur-
prise of hearing of him again has set my heart flutter-
ing sadly. lam very subject to palpitation."
Not only her heart, but her w4ple body seemingly,
for her teeth rattled on the glass from which they
made her drink some wine, as though she had the
ague.
"I suppose I'm over-tired," she said. I'm an old
woman to take a journey from the other side of the
world. A few day's rest will set me up."
She went home to the Grange with Beryl, saying
nothing on the way. but turning on her fiercely
when they were alone together in the little sitting
room.

"Why did you leave me to learn this from any lips
but yours ?" she asked. "Is it true, or some frightki
dream ?"

"It is quite true, Mrs. Dalton."
"And you can stand there and stare at me in !ha
cool manner, as if there is nothing in it, no interest at
stake. My God! What is to be done?'
"Nothing."
"Nothing! And Graham Carson alive and on his
way to England. How you talk."
"How pou talk, dear Mrs. Dalton. Graham Carson
is nothing to me—less than nothing to you. He is
only the son of my lawyer, a gentleman whom I shall
be very glad to see and congratulate on his safety.
What have I, Beryl Atherstone, to do with him, or he
with me?"

She drew herself up proudly, and looked at herself
in the glass. She had never looked more like the
Atherstones than she did at that moment, with a look
of triumphant scorn on her pretty face, and a flash in
her eyes that those who came under the lash of Us!
squire's anger had often seen. Her silky hair was no
longer carelessly dressed, as she had been wont to
wear it in Australia, and as poor Allan Temple had so
loved to see it. She had taken a fancy to pile it up
in thick, heavy masses, like a picture, which hung in
the library, of a certain "Dame Dorothea Pamela
Atherstone," an ancestress of her father, whom she
resembled. Mrs. Atherstone cried out against the in-
vocation; but Noel declared she looked just asthough
she had stepped out of Lely's frames, so the new style
carried the day.
"I hope to Heaven you are not raving mad," said
Mrs. Dalton. "If you are not, will you please to tell
me what you profess to do ?"
" Bid Mr. Graham Carson warmly welcome to the
Grange when he comes, and let him see that the un-
known Australian actress knows how to hold her own
among the best in the land. You don't know every-
thing."
"I know one thing—there seems nothing else to be
d."
"Yes, there is a great deal. I know why Graham
Carson's coming should frighten you, but if anything
happened after I left he has most likely forgotten it.
He has been mad all the time till now—quite out of
his mind; and mad people take such strange fancies.
you know."
A quick look of intelligence flashed into Mrs. Dalton's
face.

"Yes, they do," she said.
"And I've no doubt he did," went on Beryl; "but
he's all right now, and he's coming back to make love
to pretty Lilly over yonder, and marry her bye-and-
by. Be won't have any eyes or ears for anyone
else. I'm not afraid of him, but I am of some one
else."
"Who ?"
'Allan Temple."
_ _ _

"But he is in Melbourne."
"Ay, but I'm afraid he means to come over. It
was he who found Mr. Carson, and pulled him out of
Garupa Brook, I believe—don't shake and shiver like
that, or I won't talk to you—and who has taken care
of him ever since."
"And he is really coming?"
"Well, I think so, from what I have heard. All the
letters and telegrams have been to Mr. Carson, except
one. I don't see my way out of that scrape, except
by flitly refusing to see him. I suppose I've been a
fickle, mercenary wretch, but I couldn't help it. I
didn't mean to jilt him, of course; but I have, and
there's an end of it. I hope it won't come to my

cousin's ears."
"I don't see that it need; and, if it did, Miss
Atherstone of the Grange could hardly be ex-
pected to keep up her intimacy with an Australian
actor."
"No, of course not; but you know what a fool I
made of myself. I told you all about the ring and the
Semper Fidelis business, didn't I?"
"Yes, you don't wear the ring, I see."
"It wouldn't do. The old lawyer—he's like a
ferret—got asking me questions about it, who gave it
to me, and so forth, so I put it away. We must think
how to keep Allan Temple at a distance—how to pre-
vent him coming here, for I won't be annoyed and
pestered by a lot of people for no reason but that
they knew me when I was as poor as themselves."
"You are not the meek girl you used to De," said
Mrs. Dalton, looking at her in wonder.
"No, I am Miss Atherstone of the Grange," she re-
plied, "and a true scion of the house if lam to believe
all that everyone tells me."
If Mrs. Dalton had any fear to dread the advent of
Graham Carson, she hid it bravely. She saw his father
the next day, and talked to him freely about all she
remembered in connection with her brief acquaintance
with his son. She had been terribly startled by hear-
ing from Dr. Twist that he was not on board the
Psyche, having fully believed that he had gone with
the girls, as he had intended.
"What a story he will have to tell you when he
comes back," she remarked. It sounds like an ad-
venture out of a novel."
But Mr. Carson shook his head.
"I'm afraid he won't have much that is reliable to
tell," he said. " Poor fellow! he has been very ill for
a long time—quite out of his mind. His memory was
altogether gone for a long time."
Mrs. Dalton was politely sympathetic, and hoped
that the young gentleman would come home quite re-
covered, and from that time seemed less disquieted.
She beg' an to take an interest in Beryl's avocations,
her charities, and her schools—the heiress was very
fond of her schools--and all the various subjects for
thought that great wealth brings with it. She
thoroughly entered into all her pursuits; and Miss
Atherstone soon began to feel that her old friend would
prove a very useful ally indeed in many matters about
which she was anxious.
One day, when she and Noel were out riding together,
they noticed smoke rising from a cottage chimney on
a skirt of a wood in rather a lonesome part of the
estate.
Ah, the Rookery is inhabited at last," said Noel.
"I thought no one would ever live in it again."
"Why not ?"
"The place has a bad name. The last tenant was
found one morning with his head battered in. No one
could discover the murderer, and the current belief is
that he 'walks' looking for him, and his scattered
brains, perhaps. He hadn't many, for he was a
poor, half-witted creature, who got his living how he
could."
"Ugh! how horrible!" said Beryl, with a shiver.
"I wonder who lives there now."
A passing peasant, being asked, said he didn't know.
They were main queer folks, he heard; sailors or
something of that. _
"Shall we pay them a visit, Beryl? They are your
tenants, you know."
"By all means."
They knocked at the rough, unpainted door of the
Rookery, which was a mere hovel, and on opening the
door on being bidden to come in, Beryl Atherstone
saw two faces, the sight of which caused the blood to
rush back to her heart with a sudden bound, leaving
her with a face paler than a corpse.
tio be continued.)

AN honest &midi' will do his buying and sellint by
be same scales. :Vlore are 110 two weighs about