The Argosy — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

144 Playing with Fire. self could #of crush them. But he thrust the picture aside almost roughly, bestowing the most cursory glance on it. ‘“‘Laura—Miss Severn,” he cried. ‘What do you mean? How can you expect me to look at anything but you at a moment like this ? It is no time for play. I am in earnest. I love you with my whole soul—and I offer you my true and honest love. Will you have it ? I want an answer. Don’t tell me I was mistaken in the answer I thought I read in your eyes a moment ago.” “You do not deserve any answer—you will have none from me,” she cried. ‘Let me go.” And as she left the room poor Scott, with his whole heart on fire with love and suspense, and his brain whirling with conjecture and doubt, had to sit out three quarters or an hour of tea and literary gossip. He bore this—hoping that Laura would retum, but she did not come, and he had to carry his restless, unsatisfied soul away from Eaton Square without seeing her again. In the meantime the feelings of the would-be avenger were by no means enviable. Her first thought was that perhaps Constance’s untried, untrained heart had mistaken the common civilities of society for something deeper. If Scott had ever made love to Miss Harewood, surely he cou/d not be so callous at the sight of her pictured face. But she put these ideas from her as treacherous to her dead friend, and tried to steel ber heart against her lover. “Tt shows what a hardened, heartless villain he must be,” she said. ‘To care no more than that! No doubt he makes love to a fresh girl every season.” Perhaps, though, he cared as little for her, Laura, as for any of the others : in which case, where was her vengence? But no; she felt, she . knew by unerring instinct, that he did love her, deeply and passion- ately. And something had awakened in her which tried to find excuses for Howard, and longed to prove him less wicked than he seemed, and which whispered that after all it was love for her and the sight of her beauty which had made him forgetful, even of Constance. Of course this thought ought to have been unmitigatedly painful. How then shall we explain the fact that Miss Severn derived from it an exquisite, unacknowledged pleasure ? In the midst of all her brain’s confusion one thing only was plain to her: she must see him no more, and must complete her vengeance, if necessary, by letter. Stay ; what could be a completer revenge than going away, as he had done from Constance, and leaving no word behind ? So it came to pass that the next day Laura told Lady Gamgee she must go down to her mother; she felt quite unequal to any more dissipation. A statement which her pale face and weary eyes quite bore out. Lady Gamgee, whom nothing ever surprised, parted from her with gently expressed regret, and by two o'clock, Laura and her maid were in the express for Bakewell. At parting, Laura had con- fided to her hostess that Mr. Scott had made her an offer, and comicbooks.com