The Argosy — page 160: what you’re looking at

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

148 By the Sad Sea Waves. take to them. And now I must go, or my mother will be outrageous. ° I dined with him at the hotel—such a jolly dinner !” “Well, this is very pretty!” I cry, as the boy disappears. ‘‘That insolent man, of all others, to make friends with us!” “Why did you give him tea?” says Ottalie. “Give him tea! could I help it? And for you to talk so freely with him, Ottalie! I did hope you had leamed prudence ——” ‘*T did hope you had learned prudence,” mimics Ottalie. ‘ Mark me, Deborah; if anything upsets our equanimity, our domestic calm, you will have brought it upon yourself.” “Go on, go on, child.” But she does not go on. She turns to the piano, and begins the first bars of the old French song :— ‘*Partant pour la Syrie, le jeune et brave Dunois.” “Women and moths,” I murmur. ‘She has singed herself once, and she'd like to flutter near the flame again.” And I take up the bed- room candlestick. Day: Sunday. Time: five o’clock on a sultry afternoon. Dramatis personz: Ottalie, myself, and Jasper Daine, who has just unlatched the gate and is sauntering towards us, Ottalie is on the bench under the tree. J am inthe room, looking from the window. ‘Been fishing?” she asks, laconically, as he drops down by her side, and nodstome. Fishing! how irreverent she is. “No,” he says. ‘I have been boring myself with myself. After in- Hlicting my company on you in the morning, I had not the face to come any sooner ; and while I was thrown on my own resources I came to the conclusion that, in-:point of dulness, Sone and church are about on a par.” I am getting used to this man and 4s cynical irreverence ; but this last startles me, so that I exclaim in reproof. He turns to give me an amused look. “ As usual, I have shocked Miss Peyre,” he says. ‘But ——” At this point Ottalie’s glove drops. He picks it up, and goes on in his lazy, indifferent manner with some explanation to soften his words away. Then heraises the glove to his lips. “Violet is my favourite colour and favourite perfume,” he coolly says. ‘Is it also yours, Ottalie?” He calls her Ottalie for the first time in my hearing. It is only five Sundays since Keith introduced him to us, yet he calls her Ottalie. As the aborigines reckoned the flight of time by the moon, so we ef Sone reckon it by our solitary landmark—the Sabbath. Keith Harland and his haughty mother have gone again. My thoughts wander off on Ottalie’s affairs, and just as I come to the conclusion that she was sent into this world for the sole purpose of ruining® n y comliichooks.com