The Fate of Fenella. Various Authors

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      "That I am a widow," she said coolly; "that is to say, if they turn up the hotel list of visitors."

      "What name have you inscribed?" he said coldly.

      "Fenella Ffrench. I suppose I have a right to my own name?"

      "And the child's?"

      "Ronny Onslow."

      "What are your trustees about?" he broke out, with subdued passion.

      Fenella shrugged her slender shoulders, and laughed. "I was twenty-four years old yesterday," she said, with apparent irrelevance; "did you remember?"

      "I remembered," he said curtly.

      "Talking of trustees," she said, "will you ever forget the talk, and fuss, and documents that day at Carlton House Terrace? I couldn't help ​thinking of Lady Caroline Lamb, and how, when she and her husband were required to sign the deed of separation, the pair of them could nowhere be found! When discovered at last, Lady Caroline was on her husband's knee, feeding him with bread and butter! But, though they parted, he loved her all the time," went on Fenella, the little mocking voice grown suddenly wistful; "and it was on his faithful breast that she pillowed her dying head at last, and his kind voice that sped her on her way!"

      "Yes," said Frank, in a strained voice; "her faults were more of head than heart. But some women have not even hearts for faults to be bred in. Why did you do it? "he said suddenly, with a mist before his own eyes that hindered him from seeing the tears in hers.

      "Hi! Onslow! I say, Onslow!" shouted a voice that seemed to come from beneath the horses' feet, and both the young people peeped over to see a fat little man in white linen clothes, standing on tiptoe on the road, and blowing out his cheeks like a cherub's.

      "Why, Castleton!" cried Frank, "what are you doing there?"

      "Walking down my fat, dear boy. I was looking heavenward, and saw you coming. Where do you hang out? Beastly water, rotten eggs, rusty iron, and a dash of old Nick. Oh, I say!" (catching sight of Fenella, not quite hidden by ​her sunshade) "is that really—well, you know, really—I am astonished—and delighted, too! I always said——"

      "Drive on!" roared Frank, and on they went upon the instant, .and Frank turned to look at Fenella. She was very pale, and very angry, with all the summer gladness gone out of her eyes and lips.

      "Frank," she said, "never, never will I submit to be made ridiculous. By to-morrow this time, the story will be all over the London clubs. Drive back to Harrogate with you I will not, and either you get down, or I will."

      Frank never moved.

      "George!"

      "Yes, my lady."

      She stamped her little foot.

      "How dare you call me that?" she said, in a furious underbreath. "Put me down!"

      George never budged an inch. The trot-trot of the horses' feet maddened her, and she sprang up.

      "Fenella," said Frank, winding his arm round her waist, "if you don't sit tight, I'll put you on my knee, and keep you there, and then I'll kiss you."

      ​

CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

BY JUSTIN H. McCARTHY, M. P.

       Table of Contents

      KISMET.

      But, ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose.

      That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close.

      Omar Khayyam.

      "Hulloa, Jacynth!"

      Jacynth awoke from his reverie with a start and stared at the speaker. He had quite forgotten where he was. Through the gray smoke of his cigarette he had conjured, as from some magic vapor, an enchanting face—a girl's face—with hazel eyes and wonderful tan-colored hair. He had been in dreamland, and now he was only in the gardens of the hotel, and instead of his exquisite vision he found facing him a fat little man in white linen, who looked very hot and very jolly.

      "I say, Jacynth, don't you remember me?"

      Jacynth did not remember, at least fully. He had a dim consciousness that the fat little figure ought to be familiar to him, but he could not remember where or why. He had not quite collected himself yet, and he was slightly annoyed at the ​interruption to his day-dream. Also he was annoyed at being annoyed and being discomposed by anything. No perplexing witness, no hostile counsel, no antagonistic judge had ever been known to ruffle Clitheroe Jacynth's imperturbability. But then no vision with tan-colored hair and hazel eyes had ever come into court with him. He looked at the fat white figure, and shook his head gravely.

      "But I say, hang it all, Jacynth, don't you remember that night in Cairo, and the dancing girls and the hasheesh den, and the row and all the rest of it?"

      Memory asserted herself in Jacynth's mind. He did remember a night in Cairo when a party of young fellows from Shepheard's set out to see something of the queer Cairene slums. The fat little man was of the party; he was in white then, too, Jacynth remembered. He remembered, too, how hugely the little man had enjoyed everything, from the—well, the eccentricities of the dancing girls to the fumes in the hasheesh den, and even to the final scrimmage in the gambling hell, when Jacynth by a timely stroke saved his fat companion from being knifed by a Levantine rogue who had been detected in cheating. There was an awful row afterward; he remembered that, too, and an awkward business before the authorities next morning, but the names of his friends and his own legal reputation settled the ​matter. Yes, he remembered the fat little man now. He got up with a smile on his dark, clean-shaven face and held out his hand.

      "How are you, Lord Castleton?"

      Lord Castleton laughed. That was his way. He went through life laughing, as if everything were the best joke in the world.

      "I'm glad you haven't forgotten me," he said. "By Jove! I haven't forgotten you, and that turn of the wrist which sent that Levantine devil's toothpick spinning. Well, and how are you?"

      The men had sat down beside each other on the garden chair. Castleton produced a cigarette-case almost as fat as himself, on which a daintily-painted ballet girl disported.

      "Try one!" he said; "they are ripping. Bingham Pasha sent them to me himself. He got them from the Sultan."

      Jacynth took a cigarette, lit it from the end of his own, Castleton watching him all the time with the most jocular expression.

      "You're not looking very fit," he said. "Those confounded courts, I suppose. By Jove! I shouldn't like to be a lawyer."

      "Oh, I'm all right," Jacynth said; "I'm not taking the waters here. My sister lives here, and СКАЧАТЬ