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Show fsERIAL L STORY J THE GIRL from J HIS TOWN By MARIE VAN VORST D!utrmtioD bj M. G. KETTNER (Uopjnglit, IMS, br Tho Bobtw-Uerrlll Co.) 19 ' j. 8YNOP8I3. Dan Blair, the 22-year-old on of tha flfty-mllllon-dollar copper king of Blair-town, Blair-town, Mont., Is a guest at the English home of Lady Galorey. Dan's father had been courteous to Lord Galorey 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 attracted 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- loreys, Lily and Dan attend a London theater where one Letty Lane Is. the star. Dan recognizes her as the girl from his town, and going behind the scenes introduces intro-duces himself and she remembers him. He learns that Prince Poniotowsky 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 foes to see Lily; he can talk of nothing ut Letty and this angers the Duchess. The westerner finds Letty ill from hard work, but she recovers and Ruggles and Dan invite her to supper. She 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 le disclosed that he and the duchess have been mutually in love for years. Letty Blngs at an aristocratic function. CHAPTER XVII. Continued. ' Dan felt his heart grow cold. If she had awakened him when he was a little boy, she thrilled him now; he could have wept. Lady Calwarn did wipe tears away. When the last note of the accompaniment had ended, Dan's friend at his. side said: "How utterly ravishing! What a beautiful, lovely creature!" He scarcely answered. He was mak ing his way to Letty Lane, and he wrung her hand, murmuring, "Oh, you're great; you're great!" And the pleasure on his face repaid her over and over again. "Come, I want you to meet the Duchess of Breakwater, and some other friends of mine." As he let her little cold hand fall and turned about, the room as by magic had cleared. The prime minister minis-ter had arrived late and was in the other room. The refreshments were ( also being served. There was no one to meet Letty Lane, except for several young men who came up eagerly and asked to be presented, Gordon Galorey Ga-lorey among them. "Where's Lily?" Dan asked him; "I want her to meet Miss Lane." "In the conservatory with the prime minister," and Galorey looked mean-t- r tngly at an, as much as to say, "Now don't be an utter fool." But Letty Lane herself saved the situation. She shook hands with the utmost cordiality and sweetness with the men who had been presented to her, and asked Dan to take her to her motor. He waited for her at the door and she came down wrapped around as usual in her filmy scarf. "Are you better?" he asked eagerly. "You look awfully stunning, and I don't think I can ever thank you enough." She assured him that she was "all right," and that she had a "lovely new role to learn and that it was coming com-ing on next month." He helped her In and she seemed to fill the motor like a basket of fresh white flowers. Again he repeated, as he held the door open: "I can't thank you enough; you were a great success." She smiled wickedly, and couldn't resist: "Especially with the women." j Dan's face flushed; he was already deeply hurt for her, and her words showed him that the insult had gone home. "Where are you going now?" "Right to the Savoy." Without another word, hatless as he was, he got into the motor, and closed the door. "I'm going to take you home," he informed her quietly, "and there's no use In looking at me like that either! When I'm set on a thing I get it!" They rolled away in the bland sunset, sun-set, passed the park, down Piccadilly, where the flowers in the streets were o sweet that they made the heart iche, and the air through the window was so sweet that it made the senses Bwlra! I CHAPTER XVIII. A Woman's Way. When the duchess thought of looking look-ing for Blair later in the afternoon he '"M not to be found. Galorey told her Anally he had gone off in the motor 'th Letty Lane, bareheaded. The duchess was bidding good-by to the lat guest; she motioned Galorey to 'sit and he did so, and they found themselves alone in the room where toe flowers, still fresh, offered their 'lent company; the druggets Btrewn with leaves of smilax, the open piano with its scattered music the dark rosewood rose-wood that had Berved for a rest for Letty Lane's white hand. Galorey and the duchess turned their backs on the music-room, and went Into a small conservatory looking out over the park. "He's nothing but a cowboy," the lady exclaimed. "He must be quite mad, going off bareheaded through London with an actress." "He's spoiled," Lord Galorey said peacefully. She carried a bunch of orchids Dan had given her, and regarded them absently. ab-sently. "I've made him angry, and he's taking this way of exhibiting his spleen." Galorey said cheerfully: "Oh, Dan's got lots of spirit." Looking up from the contemplation of her flowers to her friend, the duchess duch-ess murmured with a charming smile: "I don't hit it off very well with Americans, Gordon." His color rising, Galorey returned: "I think you'll have to let Dan go, Lily!" For a second she thought so herself; her-self; and they both started when the voice of the young man himself was heard in the next room. "Good-by, I'll let you make your peace, Lily," and Gordon passed Dan in the drawing-room in leaving, and thought the boy's face was a study. The duchess held out her hand to Dan as he came across the room. "Come here," she called agreeably. "Every one has gone, thank heaven! I've been, waiting for you for an age. Let's talk it all over." "Just what I've come back to do." There had been royalty at the musl-cale, musl-cale, and the hostess spoke of her guestB and their approval, mentioning one by one the names of the great. It might have Impressed the ear of a man more snob than was the Montana Mon-tana copper king's son. "I did so want you to meet the Bishop of London," she said. "But nobody could find you. "I Think You'll Have to Let Dan Go, Lily!" You look most awfully well, Dan," and with the orchids she held, she touched touch-ed his hand. "Don't you think it went off well?" Dan said that it had been ripping and no mistake. "I like Lady Calwarn; she's bully, and I liked the king. He spoke to me as if he had known me for a year." She began to be a little more at her ease. "I didn't care much for. the fiddling, but Letty Lane made up for all the rest," said Dan. "Wasn't she great?" "Ra-ther!" The duchess' tone was so warm that he asked frankly: "Well, why didn't you speak to her, Lily?" And the directness caught her unprepared. unpre-pared. The insult to the actress by which she had plarfned to teach him a lesson failed to give her the bravado she found she needed to meet Dan's question. Her part of the transaction, deliberate, unkind, seemed worse and more serious through hiB headlong act, when he had driven off. braving her, in the motor of an actress. "Wasn't it too dreadful?" she murmured. mur-mured. "Do you think she noticed It too awfully? I was just about to go up and speak to her when the prime minister " Dan interrupted the duchess. He blushed for her. "Never mind, Lily." His tone had in it something of benevolence. "If you really didn't mean to be mean" She was enchanted by her easy victory. vic-tory. "It was abominable." "Yes," he accepted, "it was just that! I was mortified. You wouldn't treat a beggar so. But she's got too much sense to care." Eager to do the duchess Justice, even though he was little by little being be-ing emancipated, he was all the more determined to be fair to her. "It was too sweet of her not to mind. I dare say her check helped to soothe her feelings," tho woman said. "You don't know her," he replied quietly. "She wouldn't touch a cent.'1 The duchess exclaimed in horror: "Then Bhe did mind." And he turned slowly: "She's eaten and drunk with kings, and If the king hadn't gone so early you can bet he would have set the fashion differently. Let's drop the question, She sent you back your check, and I guess you're quits." . With a Bharp note in her voice she Bald: "I hope It won't be In the papers that you drove bareheaded back to tho hotel with her. Don't forget that we are dining with the Galorey's, and It's past seven." After Dan had left her, the duchess glanced over the dismantled room which the servants were already restoring re-storing to order. She was not at ease and not at peace, but there was something some-thing else besides her tiff with Dan that absorbed her, and that was Galorey. Ga-lorey. She couldn't quite shake him off. He was beginning to be imperious imperi-ous in his demands on her; and, In spite of her cupidity and her debts, in spite of the precarlouB position in which she found herself with Dan, she could not break with Galorey yet. She went upstairs humming under her breath the ballad Letty Lane had sung in the music room: "And long may his lady look from the castle wall." CHAPTER XIX. Dan Awakes. The next night Dan, magnetically drawn down the Strand to the Gaiety, arrived Just before the close of the last act, slipped in, and sat far back watching Letty Lane close her part. After hearing her sing as Bhe had the afternoon before In the worldly group, it was curious to see her before the public in her flashing dress and to realize how much she was a thing of the people. Tonight she was a completely com-pletely personal element to Dan. He could never think of her again as he had hitherto. The sharp drive through the town that afternoon in her motor had made a change in his feelings. He had been hurt for her, with anger at the duchess of Breakwater's rudeness, rude-ness, and from the first he had always known that there was in him a hot championship for the actress. Tonight, To-night, whenever the man who sang with her put his arras around her, danced with her, held her, it was an offense to Dan Blair; it had angered bim before, but tonight it did more. One by one everything faded out of his foreground but the brilliant little figure with her golden hair, her lovely face, her beautiful graceful body, and in her last gesture on the stage before the curtain went down, she seemed to Blair to call him and distinctly to make an appeal to him: "You might rest your weary feet If you came to Mandalay." Well, there was nothing weary about the young, live, vigorous American, Amer-ican, as, standing there in his dark edge of the theater, his hands in his pockets, his bright face fixed toward the stage, he watched the slow falling of the curtain on the musical drama. Dan realized how full of vigor he was; he felt strong and capable, indeed a feeling of power often came to him delightfully, but it had never been needful for him to exert his forces, he had never had need to show his mettle. met-tle. Now he felt at those words: "You might rest your weary feet" how, with all his heart, he longed that the dancer should rest those lovely tired little feet of hers, far away from any call of the public, far away on some lovely shore which the hymn tune called the coral strand. As he gazed at her mobile, sensitive face, whose eyes had seen the world, and ' whose lips Dan's thoughts changed ! here with a great pang, and the close of all his meditations was: "Gosh, Bhe ought to rest!" (TO BE CONTINUED.) |
