The Argosy — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

; T 2OSY. HE ARWGOSY Anne Hereford. 89 Jan. 1,1 drawing-room. Mrs. Edwin Barley stood there, just come in: she was shaking like a leaf, with the damp and cold, her hair dripping wet. When she had seen her husband leave the hall in search of George Heneage, an impulse came over her to follow and interpose between the anger of the two, should they meet. At least, partly this, partly to look after George Heneage herself, and warm him to escape. She gave me this explanation openly. “JT could not find him,” she said, kneeling down before the fire, and holding out her shivering arms to the blaze. I hope and trust he has escaped. One man’s life is enough for me to have upon my hands, without having two.” ‘‘Oh, Aunt Selina! you did not take Philip King’s life!” “No, I did not take it. And I have been guilty of no intentional wrong. But I did set the one against the other, Anne—in my vanity and wilfulness.” Looking back to the child’s eyes with which I saw w things then, and judging of these same things with my womay’s experience now, I can- not hold Selina Barley entirely to blame. An indulged daughter, she had been suffered to have her own way at Keppe Carew, and grew up to think the world was made for her. Dangerously attractive, fond to excess of admiration, she had probably encouraged Philip King’s boyish fancy, and then turned round upon him for it. At the previous Easter, on his former visit, she had been all smiles and sweetness ; this time she had done nothing but turn him into nidicule. ‘ What is sport to you, may be death to me,” says the fly to the spider. It might not have mattered so much from ez, this ridicule; but she pressed George Heneage into the service : and Philip King was not of a disposition to bear it tamely. His weak health made him appear somewhat of a coward ; he was not strong enough to take the law into his own hands, and repay Heneage with personal chastisement. Selina’s liking for George Heneage was no doubt great ; but it was not an improper liking, although the world—the little world at Mr. Edwin Barley’s—might have wished to deem it so. Before she marred Mr. Edwin Barley, she re- fused George Heneage, and laughed at him for proposing to her. She should wed a nch man, she told him, or none at all. It was Mr. Edwin Barley himself who invited Heneage to his house, and also Philip King, as it most unfortunately happened. His wife, in her wilful folly—I had almost wnitten her wilful wickedness—played them off, one upon an- other. The first day they met, Phihip King took umbrage at some remark of Mr. Heneage’s, and Selina, liking the one, and disliking the other, forthwith began. A few days on, and young King so far forgot his good manners as to tell her she “liked that coxcomb Heneage too much.” The reproach made her laugh; but she, nevertheless, out of pure mischief, did what she could to confirm Philip King in the impres- sion. He, Philip King, took to talk of this to Miss Delves; he took to comicaooks GO)