The Argosy — page 394: what you’re looking at

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

3/2 furt £élicitd. a one convent to another in the vain effort of transmuting the wood she had to work on into responsive bel!-metal. ‘“‘ But what then ?” she said to herself. “ My life was a sadder one. She has no sick father to wait on, in addition to her studies ;_ she grows quieter; but it cannot be expected that after teaching all day I can be full of entertaining conversation when at length I come in to dinner. She is well, for she is neither pale nor thin—on the contrary, although she tells me she has not left the house while I have been out, there 1s a glow on her cheek and a light in her eyes that puzzles me. She cannot be reading a romance ; she is too sincere to deceive me.” The chimes of the old cathedral at the other end of the town went eight, and then all the little clocks took up the chorus, one after another, like a tribe of charity children singing a hymn. Félicité rose with a brighter look on her face; she drew on a pair of old gloves, and then from the recess of a dark cupboard just outside her room door, she produced a battered green watering-pot. Her tall slender figure looked graceful, bendmg over the flowers on the leads outside, as she nipped off the spent blossoms and removed the faded leaves, with a care that was almost tender in its minuteness, before she began watering. The day had been intensely hot, and the thirsty earth in the flower-pots had sucked up all the water before she had half finished ; she looked down into the yard below and shouted, ‘“‘ Madame Leroux!” but no answer came. Madame Leroux was pro menading up and down in front of the hotel, talking to the chef and the garcon de salle, who were smoking their cigarettes with her husband on the bench beside the entrance doorway. Félicité had no resource but to go round to the fountain in the next street, or to await Madame Leroux’s return, and her flowers were drooping and fading. She looked at them, and then at her empty water-can, with a very discontented face, and then she looked across at the hotel windows: the one nearest to her is being thrown open, and a handsome young man, with long fair whiskers, stepped forth on the leads and offered the loan of his pitcher. Mademoiselle bowed and thanked him. Her eyes are so lustrous as she raises them to his, that Seton begins to think she must be Genevitve’s sister, instead of the dragon-like aunt he had prepared himself to conciliate. They talked and grew more and more pleased with each other; several times Seton was on the point of mentioning Genevieve; but some- thing—he could not have told what—checked the words as they came. Mademoiselle said she had only just returned from Dives. “Does Monsieur not know Dives? It is all that is most charming for the health—sea-bathing, everything. My mother inhabits Dives. I shall return to her in a day or two.” And then, after a little more talk, Mademoiselle wished him “bon soir,” and retreated. Seton went back, too, into his room, and sat on the window:-sill, COMIC OOOKS. EO mn _