The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 121: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

11¢ THE EVIL GENIUS. CHAPTER XXVIII. RESOLUTION. HAVING read Mrs. Linley’s answer, Mr. Sarrazin looked out of the breakfast-room window, and saw that the fog had reached the cottage. Before Mrs. Presty could make any remark on the change in the weather, he surprised her by an extraordinary question. ‘Is there an upper room here, ma’am, which has a view of the road before your front gate ?” ‘* Yes.” * And can I go into it without disturbing anybody ?” Mrs. Presty said, ‘‘ Certainly!” with an uplifting of her eye. brows which expressed astonishment not unmixed with suspi- cion. ‘* Do you want to go up now?’ she added, ‘* or will you wait till you have had your breakfast ?” ‘‘T want to go up, if you please, before the fog thickens. Oh. Mrs. Presty, lam ashamed to trouble you! Let the servant show me the room.” No. For the first time in her life Mrs. Presty insisted on doing servant’s duty. If she had been crippled in both legs her cu- riosity would have helped her to get up the stairs on her hands. ‘* There!” she said, opening the door of the upper room, and placing herself exactly in the middle of it so that she could see all round her: ‘‘ Will that do for you?’ Mr. Sarrazin went to the window, hid himself behind the curtain, and cautiously peeped out. In half a minute he turned his back on the misty view of the road, and said to himself: ** Just what I expected.” Other women might have asked what this mysterious proceed- ing meant. Mrs. Presty’s sense of her own dignity adopted a system of independent discovery. To Mr. Sarrazin’s amusement e imitated him to his face. Advancing to the window she too hid herself behind the curtain, and she too peeped out. Stil following her model, she next turned her back on the view—and then she became herself again. ‘‘ Now we have both looked out of the window,” she said to the lawyer, in her own inimitably impudent way, ‘‘ suppose we compare our inipressions.” This was easily done. They had both seen the same two men, walking backward and forward opposite the front gate of the cottage. Before the advancing fog made it 1mpossible to iden- tify him, Mr. Sarrazin had recognized, in one of the men, his agreeable fellow-traveler on the journey from London. The other man—a stranger—was in all probanility an assistant spy obtained in the neighborhood. This discovery suggested serious embarrassment in the future. Mrs. Prestv asked what was to be re next. Mr. Sarrazin answered: ‘‘ Let us have our break- ast.” In another quarter of an hour they were both in Mrs, Linley's room. Her agitated manner, her reddened eyes, showed that she was still suffering under the emotions of the past night. The mo- ECOMMICOOoOKS (E©) im