The Ladies' Magazine.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2578, 5 February 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Ladie s' Magazine.

“Send him to me, and you shall find a great reward.” Mil her offers were, however, refused. But though frustrated the Countess was determined to make another effort. WILD MIDNIGHT DRIVE.

The next evening Mr de la Laing was to join a party of friends in a box at the Alhambra. As he was waiting outside the Alhambra for his friends, the Countess dashed up in her motor-car, persuaded him to drive with her, and, instead of setting him down at his -destination, whirled him round and round London, hour after hour, till not only' the time of his engagement passed, but till midnight struck, and the early hours of tiie morning came and went. It was a mad, wild, passionate drive, the Countess imploring the young pianist to elope with her, the latter resisting all entreaties. “It is no- use,” he says, “I cannot love her as she loves me.”

At last, finding all entreaties useless, the Countess set him down in the Hampstead Road, miles .from his home, and drove off, leaving him to walk home. His mother, greatly’ alarmed by her son’s disappearance for all these hours, decided to place the whole matter in the hands of Mr Biden Steele, who is now endeavoring to trace the Countess.

In consequence of the strain which these sensational events have placed upon the nerves of the sensitive young artist, Mr De la Laing’s engagements for the next fortnight have been cancelled. As soon as possilbe the pianist will go into the country for a brief rest, and then visit friends on the Riviera. “A DANGEROUS WOMAN.”

All this may sound very like a chapter from a sensational romance, or the worldly wise may see in it merely the artful hand of a clever and imaginative press agent; but both the young pianist and his mother assure me that the facts are as I have heard them from their lips, and as I have set them down. I had a long conversation with them both this morning. At first I had been inclined to think that an exaggerated view of the matter had been taken, but I quickly discovered that the mother was genuinely distressed about the sensational turn which events had taken. '“The story is not exaggerated,” she said to me, “hervever extraordinary it may sound. I admit it reads like wild romancing, and. indeed, if I had read such a story about anyone else I do not think I should have believed it. We are not used to anything of this sort in New Zealand, are we? But everything happened just as stated. Our friends have been verv kind and sympathetic about it, but I am really very worried about what the woman 'may do next, my son feels as though he were being shadowed all the time. No wonder it is getting on his nerves.” “Yes, it is horrible,” said Mr do la T>aing, “I feel her eyes fixed on me when I am playing, and whether I play in Italy' or in Denmark, or in England, there she has been amongst the audience., I never know when she is going to appear. If she comes to my next concert I am sure I shall not be able to play.” “I feel sure she is a dangerous woman,” said the mother. “If you imtf seen how she went on that night outside Frascati’s you would have thought she had gone mad. She grabbed hold of my son and pinned him to the wall with her hands, and jabbered at him in half a dozen languages, imploring him wildly to go lawav with. her. And then the wild letter she wrote to me! Imagine offering a mother; a big reward to part with her son! I sought a description of the Countess. “She is very good-looking,” said the mother. “A well-made, handsome ■woman, with dark hair, straight eyebrows, a Jewish type of nose, delicately shaped, and a square resolute chin—a woman of great determination, I should say. She was stylishly dressed, all in black, with a sealskin coat, on the night I saw her at Frascati’s. She appeared to have plenty of money.” Sir de la Laing and his mother hope that the fact of the case having been placed in a solicitor’s hands, and advertised in the papers, will deter the Countess from continuing her futile attempts to kidnap the object of her infatuation.