The Argosy — page 376: what you’re looking at

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

356 Beatrix. up and down the list—‘“‘ Mary of Scotland,’ ‘Court of Queen Anne,’ ‘ Betsy Prig,’ ‘Cin-der—’ Oh Aere is a scene not yet settled; your picture of ‘The Huguenots,’ you remember, Beatrix. I suppose you can be the man there if you wish it, Curzon ?” “T do wish it,” Curzon said, hurriedly for him ; ‘that is, if Miss Falk- land will have me.” “Very good ; I do not mind. But you will have to look your very best, you know, as I cannot have my picture spoiled,” Beatrix returned, care- lessly. And, having promised to look unspeakably handsome, Curzon left them to their own devices. Felicia Rawdon and Curzon, Lord Stainer, were engaged to be married, and had been so ever since her sixteenth birthday ; and she was pow in her twenty-second year. They were cousins, and, being both young, rich, and handsome, everybody came to the satisfactory conclusion that a marriage was the most correct thing that could be arranged between them. As to the young couple themselves, it cannot be said that they were unwilling or in any wise indisposed towards each other. Curzon —five years his cousin’s senior—had some vague ideas about matrimony,. principally to the effect that sometime in the course of his existence it would be necessary for him to get a mistress for his house, to settle down, to take an interest in farming, and so: become a respectable member of society ; and Felicia, being tall, stately, and fair-haired, seemed to his careless eyes to be the properest person going to meet these far-off designs. Miss Rawdon herself was much too well bred and well edu- cated to have any idea or will of her own on such a subject at sixteen, beyond the expressed wills of her guardians, one of whom was Lady Stainer, her aunt and Curzon’s mother, The consequence would have beena marriage in this instance, I have na doubt, but for two things that happened almost simultaneously. Felicia Rawdon went to London about a year before my story opens, and met there a certain Captain Dudley, of the Dragoon Guards, who suddenly and most opportunely recollected that he had cousins residing some- where in the vicinity of Stainer Park: and Beatrix Falkland came to live with her aunt, Miss Dorothy, at Fenton. Beatrix Falkland differed from Felicia Rawdon in every possible way under the sun. She was small, dark, piquante, and wonderfully restless. Her education had been carned on in France, from which country—having attained her eighteenth year—she had come to Fenton to take her aunt’s and everybody else’s heart by storm. Even Miss Rawdon, in her usual grand manner, adopted the little gipsy on the spot as her own especial friend; while Lady Stainer, secure in her son’s engagement to Felicia, made much of the girl who was doomed to ruin all her hopes and plans. I am ashamed to have to confess it of my heroine, but Miss Trixie as she was generally called, was a flirt. She danced, laughed, and ECoOMmiclooolkKks (C(O) | im A