I Forbid the Banns! — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

28 ‘7 FORBID THE BANNS!” what the ‘it’ refers to, when you say that you must look at ‘it’ in the light of a mystery.” “ T will tell you all, Miss Travers, as the women say in the melodramas when the author is anxious to have his last scene brought up to date. The ‘it’ refers simply to an incident that has always had a certain amount of interest for me— namely, the first meeting of my father and mother. It was, curiously enough, on one of these rocks that they met.” ‘‘How very interesting ! ” “To me, yes; but to no one else in the world.” ‘“ Except the one to whom you are now talking. Think, if you were not holding me enthralled with your story I should be compelled to talk to—I mean, to listen to, Mr. Southcote. A conversation with Mr. Southcote is a mono- logue entertainment. Pray tell me all you know of that idyl of the island. Indeed I am interested in it.” “There is nothing moreto be told. My father was a cap- tain of artillery, my mother was the daughter of a general officer who had come to inspect or to do something in that way attheisland. He was inspecting one day ata fort at the head of a cliff where there is a ladder—‘ Jacob’s Ladder’ Thomas Atkins has called it, with a stroke of that graceful fancy which he has at his command. Well, the general’s daughter climbed up that ladder—it doesn’t sound quite right, does it ?—and at the top, where she expected to meet her father, she became enveloped in a mist. She wandered about for a while until she made up her mind that she had come upon theright track. She was walking briskly along— straight for the brink of the cliff ; in two seconds she would have stepped into eternity. She didn’t; she stepped into the arms of my father instead. Hehad also been lost in the mist, but having no father to look after he had wisely refrained from taking a step in anysdirection. That’s the whole story. It has a suspicion of romance.” “ Oh, you have not half told the story,” cried Miss Travers. CORMIE IOOKS COT