The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

50 THE EVIL GENIUS. him so serious and so inattentive as he was now. His eyes, wandering round the room, rested on Mrs. Linley—brilliant and beautiful, and laughing gayly. Why was he looking at his wife with plain signs of embarrassment in his face? Sydney pite- ously persisted in repeating her innocent question: ‘‘I hope I haven't done anything to offend you ?” He seemed to be still reluctant to notice her—on the occasion of ni others when she was looking her best! But he answered at last. ‘¢My dear child, it is impossible that you should offend me; you have misunderstood and mistaken me. Don’t suppose— pray don’t suppose that Iam changed or can ever be changed toward you.” He emphasized the kind intention which those words revealed by giving her his hand. But the next moment he drew back. There was no disguising it, he drew back as if he wished to get away from her. She no- ticed that his lips were firmly closed and his eyebrows knitted in a frown; he looked hike a man who was forcing himself to submit to some hard necessity that he hated or feared. Sydney left the room in despair. He had denied in the plainest and kindest terms that he was changed toward her. Was that not enough? It was nothing like enough. The facts were there to speak for themselves; he was an altered man; anxiety, sorrow, remorse— one or the other seemed to have got possession of him. Judging by Mrs. Linley’s gayety of manner, his wife could not possibly have been taken into his confidence. What did it mean? Oh, the useless, hopeless question! And yet, again and again she asked herself—what did it mean? In bewildered wretchedness she lingered on the way to her room, and stopped at the end of a corridor. On her right hand a broad flight of old oak stairs led to the bedchambers on the second floor of the house. On her left hand, an open door showed the stone steps which descended to the terrace and the garden. The moonlight lay in all ‘ts loveli- ness on the flower-beds and the grass, and tempted her to pause and admire it. A prospect of sleepless solitude was the one prospect before her that Sydney could see, if she retired to rest. he cool night air came freshly up the vaulted tunnel in which the steps were set; the moonlit garden offered its solace to the girl’s sore heart. No curious women-servants appeared on the stairs that led to the bedchambers. No inquisitive eyes could look at her from the windows of the ground floor—a solitude abandoned to the curiosity of tourists. Sydney took her hat and cloak from a stand in a recess at the side of the dour, and went into the garden. CHAPTER VIII. MRS. PRESTY MAKES A DISCOVERY. THe dinner-party had come to an end; the neighbors had taken their departure; and the ladies at Mount Morven had re- tired for the night, Gomicbdooksreo