The Argosy — page 164: what you’re looking at

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

152 . By the Sad Sea Waves. But I hold my peace stubbornly. I feel angry with everything and everybody. Her own folly led her into this; let her get out of it as she can, He stands, waiting for me to speak. Ottalie gives a great sob, which disarms me. In spite of myself I begin, and give him the outlines of the tale. Our father was Major Peyre, of the — Regiment. He was not a good man ; to say the least of it, not a judicious one. He drank and he gambled. After our mother’s death Ottalie and I were quite in his power. One of his gambling friends, to whom he became largely indebted, cast his covetous eyes on Ottalie, who was but a young girl, shy and inexperienced. My father gave her to him in marriage. Before two months were over, my father died. Mr. Daine, who pos- sibly knows Major Peyre by reputation, may remember what his death was. Before the year was out, that man—Ottalie’s husband—fell into trouble and crime. He was tried for it—tried, Mr. Daine, and reader —and he is now working out his sentence in prison. Can anyone wonder that we seek to hide our heads ? Mr. Daine, standing with folded arms and shortened breath, inquires what the man’s name was. : ‘Joyce, Walter Joyce,” I say, “ex-captain. Once, by courtesy, gentleman.” “Walter Joyce!” he exclaims, staring at her. ‘And you are Ais wife? Heaven help you!” She wrings her hands, and looks up at him with wide, tearless eyes, All her coquetries are gone, all her pretty, bewildering looks and smiles. ‘Forgive me,” she says, humbly. “Never!”. The word seems to be wrung from the depth of a despairing heart. ‘“ Knowing all this, why could you not have let me alone?” he asks—“ have checked me when you saw what you were becoming to me?” “ Because I—I grew to care for you,” she says, in her recklessness, her white lips smiling faintly. ‘‘ Because I never knew what happiness was until you came. I was very wicked, I know ; Deborah there is thinking me more wicked still for avowing it. But this is the end of all.” In her sad eyes stands the ghost of the dead and gone past. Mr. Daine, looking down upon her with strange compassion, catches up his breath with a sob. “Jasper, Jasper! Only forgive me!” The silence is dreadful. I can’t bear these scenes; I was not made for them. Her head falls in despair. All in a moment he folds her to him. “Tf that be true, if you do love me, why, then, all may be well. Why comicbooks.com