The Argosy — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

Q2 The Master of Greylands. found who were possessed of the requisites for happiness in a degree that could vie with the banker’s daughter, or who had so entire a sense of it. Beautiful, amiable, clever, rich; the darling of her father ; sheltered from every care in her sumptuous home ; loving and beloved by a young man worthy of her, and to whom she was soon to be united! In the days to come, Mary Ursula would look back on this time, and tell herself that the very intensity of its happiness might have warned her that it was too bright to last. He, her lover, was by her side now. He had come early, on purpose to be a few minutes alone with her, before the arrival of the other guests ; and they stood together on the hearth-rug. <A quiet-looking young man of middle height, with dark hair, just the shade of hers, and rather a pensive and mild cast of face. Such was Mr. Blake- Gordon. They were conversing of the future—that to both of them looked so bright; of the home that ere long was to be theirs in common. Mr. Blake-Gordon had been for some little time searching for a house, and had not met with a suitable one. But he thought he had found it now. “It seems to me to be just the thing, Mary,” he was saying—for he never called her by her double-name, but “Mary” simply. ‘“ Only four miles from Stilborough on the Loughton road; which will be within an easy distance of your father’s home and of Sir Richard's. It was by the merest chance I heard this morning that the Wests were going ; and we can secure it at once, if we will, before it goes into the market.” Miss Castlemaine knew the house by sight; she had passed it many a time in her drives and seen it nestling away amid the trees. It was called by rather a fanciful name—Raven’s Priory. “Tt is not to be let, you say, William ; only bought.” “Only bought. There will be, I presume, no difficulty made to that with the authorities.” He spoke with a smile. She smiled too. Difficulty !—with the loads of wealth that would be theirs sometime? They might well laugh at the idea. “Only that—that it is uncertain how long we may require to live in it,” she said, with a slight hesitation. ‘I suppose that—some- time ” ‘“‘ We shall have to leave it for my father’s home. True. But that, I trust, may be a long while off. And then we could re-sell Raven's Priory.” ‘Yes, of course. Is it a nice place, William ?” “ Charming,” he replied with enthusiasm. For of course all things, the proposed residence included, wore to him the hue“of) couleur, de rose. ECORNICLOOO SS (C(O) in —_)