Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1912 — THE GIRL from HIS TOWN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GIRL from HIS TOWN

By MARIE VAN VORST

Bsrtrtfi— by M. G. KETTNER

{Ooprrlffcl* 1910. by The Bobbs-Msnill Co.) S> SYNOPBIS. Dan Blair, the 22-year-old, son of the flfty-million-dollar copper king of Blairtown, 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 hie 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 hoy, a girl sang a solo, at a church, and he had never forgotten her. The Gaioreys, Lily and .Dan attend a London theater where one Letty Lane Is the star. Dan recognises her as the girl from his town, and going behind the scenes Introduces himself and she remembers him. CHAPTER V. At the Carltoni There are certain natures to whom each appearance of evil, each form of delinquency is a fresh surprise. They are born simple, in the sweet sense of the word, and they go down to old age never of the world, although in a sense wprdly. If Dan Blair's eyes were somewhat opened at twenty-two, be had yet the bloom on his soul. He was no fool, but his ideals stood up each on its pedestal and ready to appear pne by one to him as the scenes of his life Bhifted and the different •curtains rose. He had been trained In finance from his boyhood and he was a born financier. Money was bis natural element; he could go far in it. But woman! He was one of those manly creatures —a knight—to whom each woman is a sacred thing; a dove, a crystal-clear soul, made to cherish and to protect, made to be spoiled. And in Dan were all the qualities that go to make up the unselfish, tender, foolish, and often unhappy American husband. These were some of the other things he had inherited from his father. Blair, senior, had married his first whereas his boy had been trained to know money and its value, how to keep it and spend it, to save it and to make it, he had been taught nothing at all about woman. He bad never been taught to distrust women, never been warned against them; he had been taught nothing but his father’s memory 'of his mother, and the result was that he worshiped the sex and wondered at the mystery. With Gordon Galorey and the others he had ridden, shot better than they, and had played, but with Lady Galorey and the Duchess of Breakwater he was nothing but a child. As far as his hostess was concerned, on several., occasions she had put to him certain states of affairs, well, touchingly. Dan had been moved by the stories of soreb heed among the tenants, had been impressed by the necessity of reforms and rebuildings and on each occasion had given his hostess a check. She had asked him to say nothing about it to Gordon, and he had kept his silence. Dan liked Lady Qalorey extremely: she was jolly, witty and friendly. She treated him as a member oT the family and made no demands on him, save the ones mentioned.

In the time that he had come to know the Duchess of Breakwater she, on her part, had filled him full of other confidences. Into his young ears she poured the story of her disappointment, her disjointed life, from hdr worldly girlhood to her disillusion in marriage. She wak beautiful when she talked and more lovely when she wept. dDan thought himself in love with the Duchess of Breakwater. His conversations with her had brought him to this conclusion. They had motored from Osdene Park together, and be had been extremely taken with the pleasure of it, and with the fact of their real companionship. Two or three times the words had been on his lips, which were fated not to be spoken then, however, and Dan reached the Gaiety still unfettered, his duchess by .his side. And then the orchestra had begun to play “Mandalay,” the curtain had gone up and Letty Lane had come out on the boards. But her apparition did not strike off his chains immediately, nor did he renounce his plan to tell the duchess the very next 'day that be loved her. - -J:—---U—--=— ..J Wher with sparkling eyes Lady Galorey rgved about “Mandalay,” Dan listened with Everybody seemed to know all about Letty Lane, but he alone knew from what town she had come! They went for supper at the Carlton after the theater. “Letty,” L*dy Galorey said, “telfs It ;Jtfrself bow the Impresario heard her sing in some country church —picked hmr up then and there and brought

her over here, and they say she married him.” Dan Blair could have told them how she had ’sung In that llflße church that day,. Dan was eating his caviare sandwich. ‘‘Her name then was Sally Towney,” he murmured. How little he had guessed that she was singing herself right out of that church and into the London Gaiety Theater! Anyway, she had made him “sit up!” It was a far cry from : Montana to—tiw London Gaiety. And so she married the greasy Jew who had discovered her! Dan glanced over at the Duchess of Breakwater. She was looking well, exquisitely high bred, and she Impresseil him. She loaned slightly over to him, laughing. He had hardly dared to meet her eyes that day, fearing that she might read his secret, sltte had told him that in her own right she was a countess —the Countess of Stainer. Titles didn’t cut any ice with him. At any rate, she would be able to rr buy back the old farm”—that is the way Dan put it. She had told him of the beautiful old Stainer Court, mortgaged and hung up with debts, as deep in ruies as the ivy was thick on the walls. As Dan looked over at the duchess he saw the other people staring and looking about at a table near. It was spread a little to their left for four people, a great bouquet of orchids in the center. « “There,” Galorey said, “there’s Letty Lane.” And the singer came in, followed by three men, the first of them the Prince Poniotowsky, indolent,- bored, haughty, his eye-glass dangling. Miss Lane was dressed in black, a superb costume of faultless cut, and it enfolded her like a shadow; as a shadow might enfold a specter, for the dancer was as pale as the dead. She had neither painted nor rouged, she had evidently employed no coquetry to disguise her fag; rather she seemed to be on the verge of a serious Illness, and presented a striking contrast to the brilliant creature, who had shone before their eyes not an hour before. Her dress was a

challenge to the more gay and deli-" cate affairs the other women in the restaurant wore.o The gown cams severely up to her chin. Its high collar closed around with a pearl necklace ; from her ears fell pearls, long, creamy and priceless. She wore a great feathered hat, which, drooping, almost hid her small, pale face and her golden hair. She di'ew off Her gloves as she came in and her white, jeweled hands flashed. She looked infinitely tired and extremely bored. As soon as she took her seat at the table intended for her party, Poniotowsky poured her out & glass of champagne, which she drank off as though it were water. “Gad,” Lord Galorey said, “she is a stunner! What a figure, and what a head, and what daring to dress like that!” “She knows how to make herself conspicuous,” said the Duchess of Breakwater. "She looks extremely ill,” said Lady Galorey. “The pace she goes will do her up in a year or two.” Dan Blair had his back to her, and when they rose to leave he was the lafct to pass out. Letty Lane Baw him, and a light broke s .over her pallid face. She nodded and smiled and shook her hand in a pretty little salute. If her face was pale, her lips were red, and her smile was like sunlight; and at her recognition a wave of trlen'dly fellowship swept over the young man—a sort df loyal kinship to herwhtch he hadn’t felt ter any other -women there, and which he oonld not have explained. . In warm approval of the

actress' distltfction, he said softly to himself; “That’s all right—she makes the rest of them look like thirty cents." CHAPTER VI. Galorey Seeks Advice. Blair did not go back at once to Osdene Park. He stopped over in London for a few days to see Joshua Ruggles, and so remarked for the first time the difference between the speech of the old and the new world. Mr. Ruggles spoke broadly, with complete disregard ofthe frills and adornments of the Kind’s English. He spoke United Staten of the pure, broad, western brand, and it rang out, it vibrated and swelled and rolled, and as Ruggles didn’t care who heard him, nothing of what he had to say was lost. Old Mr. Blair had left behind him a comrade, and as far as advice could go the old man knew that his Dan would not be bankrupt. “Advice,” Dan Blair senior once said to his boy, “is the kind of thing we "want some fellow to give us when we ain’t going to do the thing we ought to do, or are a little ashamed of something we have done. It’s an awful good way to get cured of asking advice Just to do what the fellow" tells you. to at once.” During Ruggles’ stay in London the young fellow looked to it that Ruggles saw the sights, -and the two did the principal features of the big town, to the rich enjoyment of the Westerner. Dan took his friend every night to the play, and on the fourth evening Ruggles said: “Let’s go to the circus or a vawdeville, Dan. I have learned this show by heart!” They had been every night to see “Mandalay.” “Oh, you go on where you like, Josh,” the boy answered; “I’m going to see hpw she looks from the pit.” Ruggles was not a Blairtown man. He had come from farther west, and" had never heard anything of Sarah Towney or Letty Lane. He applauded the actress vigorously at the Gaiety at first, and after the third nighj. slept

through most of the performance When he waked up he tried to discover what attraction Letty Lane had for Dan. For the young man never left Ruggles’ side, never went behind the scenes, though he seemed absorbed, as a man usually is absorbed for one reason only. In response to a telegram from Osdene Park, Dan motored out one afternoon, apd during his absence Ruggles was surprised at his hotel by a call. “My dear Mr. Ruggles,” Lord Galorey said, for he it was the page boy fetched up, “why don’t you come out to see us? All friends of pld Mr. Blair’s are welcome at Osdene.” Ruggles thanked Galorey and said he was not a visiting man, that he only had a short time in London, and was going to Ireland to look tip “his family tree.* “There are one hundred aCreg of trees in Osdene,” laughed Galorey; “you can climb them all.” And Ruggles replied: * f • “I guess I wouldn’t find, any O’Shaughnessy .Ruggles at the top of any of 'em, ray lord. The boy has gone out to see you all today.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“She Knows How to Make Herself Conspicuous,” Said the Duchess.