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Show fERIAL I STORY J J THE GIRL 'I Ujs from jjJ HIS TOWN : By MARIE VAN VORST Illustrations by M. G. KETTNER jl& - m j (Copj-i-ikUl, lyiO, by The iJoDbb-MemU Co.) I 24 j SYNOPSIS. 1 Dan Blair, the 22-year-old son of the Ilfly-nillllon-dollar copper kins of Blair-town. Blair-town. Mont., is a guest at the English home ot Lady Galorey. Uan'9 father had been courteous to Lord Gulorey during his visit to the United States and the courtesy is now being returned to the young man. The youth has an ideal girl in his mind. He meets Lily. Duchess of Breakwater, a beautiful widow, who is atlrncted by his Immense fortune and takes a liking to her. When Dan was a boy. a girl sang a solo at a church, and he had never forgotten her. The Ga-lnreys. Ga-lnreys. Lily and Dan attend a London theater where one Letty Lane is the star. Lan recognizes her as the girl from his town, and guing behind the scenes introduces intro-duces himself and she remembers him. H- learns that Prince Ponlotowsky is suitor and escort to Letty. Lord Galorey Ga-lorey and a friend named Ruggles determine deter-mine to protect the westerner from Lily and other fortune hunters. Young Blair goes to see Lily, he can talk of nothing but .etty and this angers the Duchess. The westerner finds Letty 111 from hard work, but she recovers and Ruggles and Dan invite her to supper. Site asks Dan to build a home for disappointed theatrical the-atrical people. Dan visits Lily, for the time forgetting Letty. and later announces an-nounces his engagement to the duchess. Letty refuses to sing for an entertainment entertain-ment given by Lily. Galorey tells Dan that all Lily cares for is his money, and It is disclosed that he and the duchess have been mutually In love for years. Letty sings at an aristocratic function, Dan escorting her home. Dan confronts Galorey and Lily together. Later he informs in-forms Letty that his engagement with Lily la broken, asks the singer to marry him. and they become engaged. Ruggles thinks the westerner should not marry a public singer, CHAPTER XXIV. Continued. He wanted to tell her that the girl Dan married should Tie the kind of woman his mother was, but Ruggles couldn't bring himself to say the words. Now, as he sat near her, he was growing so complex that his brain was turning round. He heard her murmur: "I told you I knew your act, Mr. Ruggles. It isn't any use." This brought him back to his position posi-tion and once more he leaned toward her and, in a different tone from the one he had intended to use, murmured: mur-mured: "You don't know. You haven't any idea. I do ask you to let Dan go, that's a fact. I have got something else to propose in its place. It ain't quite the same, but It is clear marry me!" She gave a little exclamation. A slight smile rippled over her face like the sunset across a pale pool at dawn. "Laugh," he said humbly; "don't keep in. I know I am old-fashioned as the deuce, and me and Dan is quite a contrast, but I mean just what I say, my dear." She controlled her amusement, if it was that. It almost made her cry with mirth, and she couldn't help it. Between laughing breaths she said to him: "Oh, is it all for Dan's sake, Mr. Ruggles? Is it?" And then, biting her lips and looking at him out of her beautiful eyes, she said: "I know it is I know it is I beg your pardon." par-don." "I asked a girl once when I was poor too poor. Now this is the second sec-ond time in my life. I mean just what I say. I'll make you a kind husband. I am fifty-five, hale as a nut. I dare say you have had many better offers." of-fers." "Oh, dear," she breathed; "oh, dear, please please stop!" ,fBut I don't expect you to marry me for anything but my money." Ruggles put his cigar down on the edge of the table. He looked at his chair meditatively, he took out his silk handkerchief, polished up his glasses, readjusted them, put them on and ihen looked at her. "Now," he said, "I am going to trust you with something, and I know you will keep my secret for me. This shows you a little bit of what I think about you. Dan Blair hasn't got a red cent. He has nothing but what I give him. There's a false title to all that land on the Bentley claim. The whole thing came up when I was home and the original company, of which I own three-quarters of the stock, holds the clear titles to the Blairtown mines. It all belongs now to me, if I choose to present my documents. Dan knows nothing about this not a word." The actress had never come up to such a dramatic point in any of her plays. With her hands folded in her lap she looked at him steadily, and he could not understand the expression expres-sion that crossed her face. He heard her exclamation: "Oh, gracious!" "I've brought the papers back with me," said the westerner, "and it is between you and me how we act. If Dan marries you I will be bound to do what old Blair would have done cut him off let him feel his feet on the ground, and the result of his own folly." He had taken his glasses off while he made this assertion. Now he put them on again. "If you give him up 111 divide with the boy and be rich enough Btlll to hand over to my wife all she wants to spend." She turned her face away from him and leaned her head once more upon her hands. He heard her softly murmuring mur-muring under her breath, with an absent ab-sent look on her face, accompanied by a still more Incomprehensible smile. "That's how it stands," he concluded. conclud-ed. She seemed to have forgotten him entirely, and he caught his breath when she turned about abruptly and said : "My goodness, hov Dan will hate being poor! He will have to sell all his stickpins and his motor cars and all the things he has given me. It will be quite a little to start on, but he will hate it, he is so very smart." "Why, you don't mean to say " Ruggles gasped. And with a charming smile as she rose to put their conversation at an end, she said: "Why, you don't mean to say that you thought I wouldn't stand by him?" She seemed, as she put her hands upon her hips with something of a defiant look at the elder man, as though she just then stood by her pauperized pau-perized lover. "I thought you cared some for the boy," Ruggles said. "Well, I am showing it." "You want to ruin him to show it, do you?" As though he thought the subject dismissed he walked heavily toward the door. "You know how it stands. I have nothing more to say." He knew that turn umiw ni iiMisHimiiiii hi 1 1 iiiiifBS.'.iii!JJJiJ.BiiinjHiiMJwiiiiii WiiiifiwiMwaBnBww ILLLiMiiiiiiuiiii niiiBiiiiiiJimmiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiii' mB'miiiimmmMi'iiiiiiiiii miiswssi msns iwm "Why, You Don't Mean to Say That You Thought 1 Wouldn't Stand by Him?" he had signally failed, and as a sudden sud-den resentment rose In him he exclaimed, ex-claimed, almost brutally: "I am darned glad the old man is dead; I am glad his mother's dead, and I am glad I have got no son." The next moment she was at his side, and he felt that she clung to his arm. Her sensitive, beautiful face, all drawn with emotion, was raised to his. "Oh, you'll kill me you'll kill me! Just look how very ill I am; you are making me crazy. I just worship him." "Give him up, then," said Ruggles steadily. She faltered: "I can't I can't it won't be for long" with a terrible pathos pa-thos in her voice. "You don't know how different I can be: you don't know what a new life we were going to lead." Stammering, and with intense meaning, mean-ing, Ruggles, looking down at her, said: "My dear child my dear child." In his few words something perhaps per-haps made her see in a flash her past and what the question really was. She dropped Ruggles' arm. She stood for a moment with her arms folded across her breast, her head bent down, and the man at the door waited, feeling that Dan's whole life was in the balance bal-ance of the moment. When she spoke again her voice was hard and entirely devoid of the lovely appealing quality which brought her so much admiration admira-tion from the public. "If I give him up," she said slowly, slow-ly, "what will you do?" "Why," he answered, "I'll divide with Dan and let things stand just as they are." She thought again for a moment and then as if she did not want him to witness to detect the struggle she was going through, she turned away and walked over toward the window and dismissed him from there. "Please go, will you? I want very much to be alone and to think." CHAPTER XXV. Letty Lane Runs Away. He had not got upstairs to his rooms at the Carlton before a note was handed him from the actress, bid ding him to return at once to the Savoy, Sa-voy, and Ruggles, his heart hammering hammer-ing like a trip hammer, rushed up to his rooms, made an evening toilet, for it was then half-past 6even, threw his cravats and collars all around the place, cursed like a miner as he got Into his clothes, and red almost to apoplexy, nervous and full of emotion, emo-tion, he returned to the rooms he had left not three hours before. The three hours had been busy ones at the actress' apartment. Letty Lane's sitting-room was full of trunks, dressing bags and traveling paraphernalia. parapher-nalia. She came forward out of what seemed a world of confusion, dressed as though for a journey, even her veil and her gloves denoting her departure. She spoke hurriedly and almost without with-out politeness. "I have sent for you to come and see me here. Not a soul in London knows I am going away. There will be a dreadful row at the theater, but that's none of your affairs. Now, t want you to tell me before I go just what you are going to do for Dan." "Who are you going with?" Ruggles asked shortly, and she flashed at him: "Well, really, I don't think that is any of your business. When you drive a woman as you have driven me, she will go far." He interrupted her vehemently, not daring to take her hand. "I couldn't do more. I have asked you to marry me. I couldn't do more. I stasd by what I have said. Will you?" he stammered. She knew men. She looked at him keenly. Her veil was lifted above her eyes and its shadow framed her small pale face on which there were marks of utter disenchantment, of great en nui. She said languidly: "What I want to know is, what you are going to do for Dan?" "I told you I would share with him." "Then he will be nearly as rich?" "He'll have more than is good for him." That satisfied her. Then she pursued. pur-sued. "I want you to stand by him. He will need you." i Ruggles lifted the hand he held and kissed it reverently. "I'll do anything any-thing you say anything you say." Down-stairs in the Savoy, as Dan had done countless times, Ruggles waited until he saw her motor car carry her and her small luggage and Higgins away. In their sitting-room in the Carlton a half-hour later the door was thrown open and Dan Blair came in like a madman. Without preamble he seized Ruggles by the arm. "Look here," he cried, "what have you been doing? Tell me now, and tell me the truth, or, by God, I don't know what I'll do. You went to the Savoy. You went there twice. Anyhow, Any-how, where is she?" Dan, slender as he was beside Ruggles' Rug-gles' great frame, shook the elder man as though he had been a terrier. "Speak to me. Where has she gone?" He stared in the Westerner's face, his eyes bloodshot. "Why in thunder don't you say something?" And Ruggles prayed for some power to unloose his thickening tongue. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |
