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T HOU Q A VEST fy|E HALL CAINE. Copyright, 1813, by Hearst's Magazine— Copyrighted in Great Britain. Alone in London. A T eight, o’clock next morn ing I was in the train leav ing Liverpool for London, I had selected a second-class compartment labelled: “For Ladies,” and my only traveling companion was a tall, fair wo man. in a seal skin coat and a very large black hat. She had filled the carriage with the warm odor of eau-de-cologne and the racks on both sides with her lug gage, which chiefly consisted of ladies’ hat boxes of various shapes and sizes. Hardly had we started when I realized that she was a very loqua cious and expensive person. Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In London, perhaps? No? Probably I lived in the ountry? Yes? That was charming, the country being so lovely. “Any friends In Ix>ndon?” “No.” “None whatever?” “None whatever. “But won’t you be lonely by your self in London?” “A little lonely, perhaps.” Being satisfied with what she had found oqt about me, my traveling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told me something about herself. She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the Wrag End of Ijon- don. Occasionally she jp ide personal viMts to the provinces to take orders from the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she found it more profitable to remain in town, where her connection was large, among peo ple who could pay the highest prices. By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay in get ting into the station, my traveling companion put her head out of the window to Inquire the cause. “1 see what it is,” she said. “The shooting season is over, and the so ciety people are coming down from the moors. 1 know lots and lots of them. They are my beat customers— the gentlemen at all events.” “The gentlemen?” “Why, yes," phe said with a little laugh. After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotch train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen in knicker bockers and cloth caps were stroll ing about the platform. My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names, generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones. She Dodges Her Husband’s Friend. Suddenly 1 had a shock. A tall man. whose figure I recognized, passed close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself from observation behind the curtain of the window. “Hello!" cried my companion. “There’s Teddy EasteUff. He married Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop, 1 may tell you.” I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hidden my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still more confidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers, and l caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind of fashionable Bohemia. More than once I recognized my husband’s friends among the num ber of her clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subject of discussion, 1 made the ex cuse of a headache to close my eyes and be silent. My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, from Rugby to Willesden. where, awakening with a start while the tickets were being collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion- Full Synopsis of Previous Chapters. D ANIEL O’NEILL, a powerful, self-made man, forces his only daugh ter, Mary, Into a loveless marriage with the Impecunious and profli gate Lord Raa, so that hln amhitlor to have his descendants the rightful heirs of the one earldom in Ellam may he realized. Mary, a convent-raised young woman, whose happiness is supposed to follow her father’s dictates, dares to hope that her loveless union with this ungodly man may be purged of all ita sordidness by the sacred sacrament through which she and her hus band have lust passed That ihls hope is unfounded the events of their first evening together soon prove to her. Shocked to discover his lordship to bo a man of sordid, sensual passions, Lady Kaa refuses utterly to have anything to do with her husband tintII such time as he can prove himself worthy of her love. During the honeymoon abroad Alma Ller, a divorcee who had been expelled from the convent Mary attended In Romt, attac hes herself to the f »arty. and makes tha “honeymoon trip’’ a long series of slights and insults for >ady Raa. At last Lady Kaa becomes certain of the Infidelity of her husband and of his misconduct with Alma Ller. On her return to London Mary encounters her old play-fallow, Martin Conrad, who has returned from his triumphant expedition to the Antarctic. Drawn into ever-closer relations with the only man for whose friendship she had ever cared, Mary finally awakes to the fact that she is hopelessly In love with Martin. Terrified by this knowledge, and finding herself more and more in love with Martin, she determines to run away from the cause of her distress, and go home. Mary's home-coming to Castle Kaa Is a sad affair Her husband fills the tumble-dqwn old mansion with his fast friends from London, Including Alma Ller. who assumes control of the household. Ultimately the Illness of her father offers Mary excuse for escape from the Intolerable environment But before visiting her old home Mary appeals In turn to her Bishop and to he father’s lawyer, only to be told thmt neither Church nor State can offer any relief from her false position. Eventually she consults Father Dan, telling him that, she cau no longer live with her unfaithful husband, but his counsel Is that she cleave to the Church and give up Martin Conrad. She returns next day to Castle Kaa to find that Martin Is arriving for a farewell visit, and that by Alma Liar's deceitful scheming the whole house party has gone off for a few days’ cruise. During her three days alone with her lover Mary fights a grim battle with temptation, only to find on tho last night that her faith In renunciation and thf laws of the Church Is a fragile thing compared with her overwhelming love for this nure-hearted man. With Martin’s passionate words, “You arc my real life, I am your real husband.” ringing In her brain she forgets everything else, and with strong steps walks across the corridor to Martin’s bedroom. This is the action which Martin has advised as being the only course open to them which is sure to bring the one result they arc* determined to attain—Mary s divorce from Lord Kaa Mary determines, ufter the departure of Martin Conrad, to sink her iden tity In the whirlpool of London She Is driven by fear of Lord Raa’s discovery of her unfaithfulness to him; she is equally afraid of the venomous tongue of Alma Ller. Mary books passage for Liverpool on the midnight steamgr, trav eling in the steering to further guard her flight. glass, and then interested herself afresh in my own affairs. “Did you say, my dear, that yoq have no friends In London?” I repeated that I had none. “Then you will go to a hotel, I suppose?” I answered that l should have to look for something less expensive. “In that case," she said, “1 think I know something that will suit you exactly.” It was a quiet boarding establish ment In Bloomsbury—comfortable house, reasonable terms, and, above all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it was kept by her, own sister, and if I liked she would take me along In her cab and drop me at the door. Should she? Looking back at ttyit moment T cannot but wonder that after what I had heard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the last hour I had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so that when my companion offered me a shelter In that great, noisy, bewildering city In which I had intended to hide my self, but now' feared I might be sub merged and lost, with a willing, If not a cheerful heart, I accepted. She Arrives at Her New Home. Half an hour afterward our cab drew up in a street off Russell Square at a rather grimy looking house which stood at the corner of another and smaller square that was shut off by an iron railing. The door was opened by a young waiter of 16 or 17 years, who was wearing a greasy dress suit and a solid shirt front. My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at the same moment a still larger and per haps grosser woman than my friend, with the same features and complex- ton, came out of a room to the left with a serviette in her hand. "Sophie!" “Jane," cried my companion, and pointing to me she said, “I’ve brought you a new boarder.” Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me. who and what I was. and why I had come up to London. "I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much, you know." “Why, no, certainly not," said the sister. At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing my trunk into the house on his shoulder, and my trav eling companion was bidding me goodbye and saying she would look me up later. When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of hot food, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear the clink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishos in the room the landlady had come from. The Grotesque Set of Fellow Boarders. “You'd like to go to your bedroom at once, wouldn’t you?" she said. We went up tw ? o flights of stairs covered with rather dirty druggeting. along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and finally up a third flight that was bare to the boards, until we came to a rooili which seemed to be at the top of the house and sit uated in its remotest corner. “I dare say this will do for the present," said the landlady, and though my heaTt was in my mouth I compelled myself to agfee. “My terms, Including meals and all extras, will be a pound a w'eek,’’ she added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat, I assented, whereupon my landlady left, me, saying lunch was Just on, and I could come down stairs when I was ready. A talkativg, cockney chambermaid with a good little face brought me a fat, blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found my way down to the dining Toom. The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me at that first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes, many of them rather shabby and some ulmost grotesque. Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I en tered, and I w f as so confused that 1 stood hesitating near the door until the landlady called to me. “Come up hero,” she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat by her side, which had evidently been leserved for. me, she whispered, “1 don’t think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What Is it?” I had no time to deliberate. “O’Neill,” I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising her voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of her family, said, “Mrs. O’Neill, my dears.’ Then the ladies at the table in clined their heads at me and smilea, while the men (especially those who were the most strangely dressed) rose from their seats and bowed deeply. •The Missing Peeress. O F all houses In London this, 1 thought, was the least suitable to me. Looking down the table I told my self that it must be the very home of idle gossip and the hotbed of tittle- tattle. I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house when I realized that my fellow-guests were the most re served and self-centered of all pos sible people. One old gentleman who wore a heavy mustache, and had been a colonel in the Indian army, was un derstood to bo a student of Biblical prophecy, having collected some thou sands of texts which established the identity of the British nation with the lost tribe of Israel. Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken “orders" without securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of the world, and (after forty years of continuous labor) to have reached the century before Christ. An elderly lady with a benign ex pression was said to be a tragic actress who was studying in secret for a season at the National Theater. Buch, and of such kind, were my housemates, and 1 have since been told that every great city has many such groups of people, the great prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors—those | the world does not know, the odds and ends of humanity—thrown aside by the rushing river of life into the gul- ieyw ays that line its banks, the odd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd un cles. the odd aunts, for whom there | is no place in the family, in society. | or in the business of the world. , It was all very curious and pa- 1 thetic, put I should have been safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London into which chance, had so strangely thrown me but for one unfortunate lappenlng. That was the arrival of the dally newspaper. There was never more than a single copy. It came at 8 in the morning and was laid on the dining room mantelpiece, from which (by an un written law of the houf*e) it was the duty as well as the honor of the person who had first finished break fast to take it up and read the most startling part of the news to the rest of the company. She Hears the Story of Her Disappearance. Thus It occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I was star tled by the voice of the old colonel who. standing back to the fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried: “Mysterious disappearance of a peer ess.” "Read it,” said the old clergyman. The teacup which I was raising to j m.v mouth trembled in my hand, and when I eet it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what was com ing, and it. came. The old Colonel read: “A telegram from Blackwater an nounces the mysterious disappear ance of the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late on Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning. “It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little more than a year ago. and her dis appearance is the more unaccountable from the fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied in preparing for a fete in honor of her return home after a long and happy honeymoon. “The pavilion in which the fete was to have been held had been erected on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable con jecture is that the unhappy lady, go ing out on Thursday night to super intend the last preparations, lost her way in the darkness, and fell over the cliffs. “The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Elian until the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Friday evening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion. “Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief stricken husband.” After the colonel had finished read ing I had an almost irresistible im pulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my housemates looked into my face they must see that I was the person indicated. They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations (“Most mys terious!” “What can have become of her?” "On the eve of her fete, too!”) they began to discuss the disappear ance in general, each illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study, x It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed—how newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Elian to inquire into the circumstances of my disappear ance; how the theory of accident gave place to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the the ory of flight; how a porter on^the pier at Blackwater said he had car ried my trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, think ing I was a maid from the great house until I had given him half a crown (his prope^* fee being three pence); how two female passengers had declared that a jperson answer ing to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool; how these clews had been followed up and had led to nothing, and now, finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my disappearance could not be more mysterious if 1 had dropped from midair Into the middle of the Irish Sea. Reward of 500 Pounds Offered for Information. But then came another develop ment. My father, who was reported to have received the news of my de parture in a way that suggested that he had lost control of his senses (raging and storming at my husband ,ike a man demented), having come to the sudden conclusion that I, being in a peculiarly sensitive condition, had received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered five hun dred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery, which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart broken fam ily but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and in heritance. , V With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal appear ance. “Age twenty; a littla, under the me dium height; slight; very black hair; lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression; unusual ly sunny smile.” It w’ould be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even the nervous stirring of my spoon and fork made me wonder that my house mates did not realize the truth, which must, I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes. They never did, being sp utterly im mersed in their own theories, but all the same 1 sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to say, “Stop, stop, don’t you see it is I?” That I never did so was due to the fact that not knowing what legal powers my father would have had to “I passed through the streets stunned, stupefied, feeling as if I were running away from some malignant curse, the newsmen pursuing me, darting out from every street crying “Paper—third e’shen—loss of the Schosha!’’ An Extract Hearst’s from this great story, now running in Magazine, wh'ch is the talk of the coun try—the most virile and daring novel ever penned by this famous author. Read the synopsis and in stallment, and then continue it in Hearst’s Magazine for June, which has just been issued from the press. By Hall Caine Author of 44 The Christian” 44 The Prodigal Son/' Etc, f Etc. Illustrated by Frank Craig compel my return to Elian, the ter ror that Sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the le gitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that would bring not only upon me but upon Martin. I had some reason for this fear. After my father's offer of a reward there came various spiteful para graphs (Inspired, as I thought, by Alma, and written by the clumsier hand of my husband) saying It was reported In Elian that If my disap pearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only "shock” I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumor having for some time associated my name with that of a person who was not unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration. It was terrible. After awhile I realized that not only my housemates, but all London, was discussing my disappearance. It was a rule of our boarding house that during certain hours of every day everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and having nothing else to do, I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so I was compelled to pass certain news venders' stalls, and I saw for sev eral days that nearly every placard had something about “the missing peeress.” When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a sense of being pursued and the feel ing which a nervous woman has when she is going down a dark corridor at night—that noiseless footsteps are coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder. But nobody troubled me In the streets, and the only person in our boarding house who seemed to sus pect me was our landlady. She said nothing, but when my lip was quiv ering to the old colonel read that cruel word about Martin, I caught her little gray eyes looking aslant at me. One afternoon, her sister, the milli ner, came to see me according to her promise, and thought she, too, said nothing, I saw that while the old colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearth rug about some disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she was look ing fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I was ruckling up the discolored chintz in my chair. Then in a moment—I don’t know why—it flashed upon me that my traveling companion was in corre spondence with my father. That idea became so insistent toward dinner time that I made pre tense of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, where the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid them on my forehead to relieve my headache—though she increased it, poor thing, by talking perpetually. Next morning my landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from my name, I was Irish and a Cath olic, I might like to receive a visit from a Sister of Mercy who called to the house at intervals to attend to the sick. I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling that my Identity was suspected, I dare not give cause for further suspicion, so I compelled myself to agree. A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with my back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face an at tack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle hand knocked at my door. “Come in," I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a sw inging bough. And then an astonishing thing hap pened. A young tvoman stepped quietly In to the room and closed the door be hind her. She was wearing the blue and white habit of the Little Sisters of the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, pain-featured face in an instant. A flood of shame and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me at the sight of her. It was Mildred Bankes. Identified. MtY," said Mildred, "speak Jow and tell me everything." She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in both of mine, and told her. I told her that I had fled from my husband’s house because I could not bear to remain there any longer. I told her that my father had mar ried me against my will, In spite of my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I- had any right to resist him. I told her that my father—God for give me if I did him a wrong—did Mary O’Neill, the heroine of this great story. In “The Woman Thou Gavest Me” is contained the true story of Mary O'Neill, told by herself and written from her memoranda. Forced into a loveless marriage with the profli gate Lord Raa, Mary is despondent and later terrified to And that, she has fallen desperately in love with an old play-fellow. Read how she fights against temptation, only to be overcome with her overwhelming love for this man. This is the story you have been hearing about and the one that has created such a sensation through out the country. Mr. Caine has not minced words in discussing the true-to-life situations that continually occur in his novel, but paints word-pic tures of living truths that drive their lessons home. made a fervent appeal to Mildred to save me. “Oh, Mildred, save me, save me,” I cried. “But how can I? How can I?’’ she asked. I saw what she meant, and think ing to touch her still more deeply 1 told her the rest of my story. I told her that if I had fled from my husband’s house it was not mere ly because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because, I too, loved somebbdy else—somebody who was far away but wa3 coming back, and there was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from every danger, and we should love each other eternally. * not love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, and that if he were searching for me now it was only because my absence disturbed his plans and hurt his pride. I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he had mar ried me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and secure an income. I told her, too. that not only did my husband not love me. but he loved somebody else, that he had been crue’ and brutal to me, and therefore (for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under any circum stance?. While I was speaking I felt Mil dred’s hand twitching betwen mine, and when I had finished she said, “But. my dear child, they* told me your friends were broken-hearted about you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, and therefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home.” “It’s not true, it’s not true,” I said. She Told Me How She Came To Be There. And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me how she came to * there—that the woman who had traveled with -me in the train from Liverpool, see ing my father’s offer of a reward, had written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody to establish my Identity; that my father wished to come to London for this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead but had been prohibited by his bishop, and finally that my father had writ ten to his lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had been together at the Sac red Heart in Rome, and that it warf her work now to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people. “And now the lawyer and the doc tors are downstairs,” she said in a whisper, “and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they may apply for an order to send you home.” This terrified me so much that 1 KODAKS a Fruirq. ,n ® ThHt Can B ' I Eastman Films snii >om- WKKmmmmmJL plete stock amateur supplies. .Ice for out-of-town customer*. 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