The Argosy — page 208: what you’re looking at

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

194 A Marriage from the Stage. family treasures ; or, at least, an agent of some secret society which had murderous designs on the Tory master of the house. Mr. Raughan was quite sure the man would prove an invaluable servant, Mrs. Raughan shared neither her husband’s nor her servants’ sentiments. She was conscious only that this inscrutable being, with his lowered eyes and his ready anticipation of her every wish: for it was he who chiefly waited on her : was watching her as narrowly as if his life depended on the discovery of her inmost thoughts. She was sure that no word or look passing between her husband and herself in his presence was unnoticed, that nothing she did or said was ever forgotten by him. When she sang, she was perfectly certain that he would be listening outside the door; she could often hear the sound of his retreating footsteps as she left the piano. Her favourite songs she always found arranged upon the piano ready for her, and she knew that this must be the new valet’s doing. ‘I don’t like him,” Claudia once remarked to her husband. “Do you particularly wish to keep him?” “I dislike changing servants if I can help it,” replied Raughan carelessly. _&e was already fairly on the way to recovery from the temporary stage fever caught in Florence ; that fever together with the American fever being the epidemics to which youthful members of the British aristocracy are supposed to be most susceptible. Claudia shrugged her shoulders and leaned back in her chair; she knew Arthur was not in the mood to listen patiently to any com- plaint of hers. “The man does extremely well, Claudia. It would not be right to send him away without reason.” Mrs. Raughan tapped her foot on the fender and held her hands towards the fire without replying. “ What a pity it is you don’t ride, Claudia,” Arthur began again after a moment’s silence. ‘“ Hunting is the only thing to do in winter, and there is a quiet horse you can try. We can have some fellow from Rosebridge to give you lessons, and Mrs. Brunswold will give you hints; she has the best seat of any woman in the county.” “You know I have never ridden,” said Claudia, turning her eyes slowly upon him as she waved the screen that had been lying on her lap. ‘I am not yet used to English country life. You seem to forget sometimes what manner of life mine has been, and that violent exercise is particularly disagreeable to me.” “ Very well,” replied her husband, again carelesely, and the sub- ject was dropped. Mrs. Raughan was beginning to see that Arthur could not realise sympathetically the difference in. their temperaments. She had, how- ever, another and a very definite trial before her. Visitors began to come ; people with whom the artist had about as much in common as a nightingale would have with a thoroughbred fox-terrier. The undisguised wonder with which they all regarded comicbooks.com