The Argosy — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

62 The Missing Rubies. anxiously tor the first notes of warning. We are never so keenly alive to omens as when we are intensely happy.” Again her colour came and went softly, and her expression showed — the emotion she felt at his words. It seemed to her that he must have an almost supernatural power of reading the thoughts. ‘“Mr. Vordenberg, are you a magician? How is it that you know so well what people think and feel?” “Do you fancy that because I am grave and white-haired, I have never known youth and bliss? ‘There is no love-throb that I have not felt ; no glorious hope that has not been familiar to me. Is it any wonder that I know the signs of love in another, and comprehend every fear that clouds the rapture of a rejoicing heart ?” He looked at her with such tender gentleness in his gaze that she felt a great longing to tell him all that was in her mind—all the foolish doubts and anxieties that she had not wholly confided to Harriet. And yet, how could she put such vague things into words ? ‘‘Other people do not comprehend so quickly,” she said, with a little sigh. “Very few have had an experience like mine,” he answered. “ Confide in me if you will, Miss Ward. I have an idea the day may come when my friendship may be of use to you. This is onlya dreamy notion, perhaps, yet it may be a true one.” “I shall be glad to tell you something if you care to listen!” She lifted her deep blue eyes to his with such a trusting glance that he was smitten with a sharp pain. How plain it was that she could not look at him so frankly if her heart had not been fully pre- occupied! A woman who was heart-free would have found out his secret and have been abashed and reserved. But Beatrice, absorbed in her own feelings, was quite blind to his. **T do, indeed, care to listen. Say on.” “Well, then, your song seemed to strike me with a sense of fear, just because I have been so very happy to-day. I am entering on a new path and I wish I had not heard that haunting refrain !” “Do not let it trouble you,” he said, earnestly. ‘That melody was an air sung by Spanish gipsies under the walls of the Alhambra ; but the words that accompanied it were so vapid and meaningless, that I substituted others. They are mere commonplace lines, jotted down in an idle moment, and not worthy of a serious thought. And now tell me if I may be your friend, and if you will really trust me now, and always?” ‘I will trust you from the bottom of my heart, and be grateful for your friendship.” ‘* That is well.” He drew a long breath, and began to tum over a pile of music. “TI will sing you something joyous and triumphant, something that will silence the echoes of that foolish song. But there is another thing I want to know. A friend has a right to ask a comicbooks.com