The Argosy — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

61 THE MISSING RUBIES. By Saran Doupney. CHAPTER XI. A CHRYSANTHEMUM. WEEN the lessons had first begun, Harriet had made a point ot carrying her work-basket upstairs and sitting in the room to jisten, as she said, to the music. But this practice of hers was very soon discontinued. In the first place, Mr. Milton wanted his wife downstairs, and missed her companionship; and in the second place she knew that Mr. Vordenberg’s interest was in Beatrice, not in herself. Moreover, this quiet man, so noble-looking and grave, might safely be trusted with his young pupil; and Mrs. Milton was quite sure that her presence was not needed at all. ‘What was the song?” he asked, earnestly. ‘Do you mean the little English thing I was singing an hour or two ago?” She answered him by singing those two haunting lines in rather an unsteady voice : " Will it go, or will it stay?” Who can say, ah, who can say?” ‘I have sung many sadder songs,” he said, “and they have not depressed you; indeed, you have asked for them again and again. There are opera-airs, full of heart-break and hopelessness, which you often like to hear. Why were you moved by that poor little ditty ?” “It is difficult to say.” Her colour rose as she spoke, and her hands trifled nervously with a sheet of music. He stood still for a second, watching her in silence. And as he looked at her, standing before him in all the perfect bloom and freshness of her early womanhood, his own face suddenly changed and the light vanished from his features. For him, who had already endured a sharper agony than falls to the lot of many men, there was now a new pang But he bore it calmly, silently, as he bore every- thing, and made no sign. A man of slower perceptions would not have divined at once the meaning of that quick blush and girlish nervousness. But he read these slight tokens aright, and knew, by a sure instinct, why her young heart had been saddened by that song. “‘T think I understand,” he said, very quietly. ‘There are times when we cannot bear even the faintest hint of a doubt. When the heart is trembling over some newly-found joy, it always listens comicbooks.com