The Argosy — page 381: what you’re looking at

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

Beatrix. 30: They were very silent, these two—strangely so—silent with thoughts too deep for words. All night long there had seemed to hover round them some subtile, indefinable danger, that might at any moment declare itself and cause inextricable confusion. They feared the very sweetness of the loneliness they were now enjoying, and yet they lingered. Each sought longingly to read the other’s thoughts, and perhaps both did in reality guess more than half the truth. Once Felicia, raising her eyes, met those of Dudley fixed upon her intently with a strange, untranslatable expression in them that no true woman ever yet misun- derstood. She, at least, did not, and lowered her eyes suddenly, with new-born shyness, flushing and paling again perceptibly. After that, she grew very nervous—almost painfully so—and strove eagerly to think of some commonplace to utter, but not one came to her assist- ance. Glancing upwards for inspiration, she found that the gleaming stars only dazzled her, while the very quiet beauty of the night merely made her own heart seem more restless in comparison. She moved impatiently, and, as she moved, her handkerchief fell to the ground. They both stooped to recover it, and in so doing their hands met. It was enough. ‘ Felicia,” he murmured, a-ring of passionate love and despair running through his voice, his face cold and white. Meanwhile the careless stars gleamed on triumphantly ; the band played its merriest strains. Dull care seemed to have no part in that gay assemblage where all around was musical laughter, mingled with pleasant youthful voices. All was gaiety, flowers, and sweetest music - and Lady Stainer was fretting herself to death because she foolishly imagined her handsome son was paying more than ordinary attention to black-eyed Laura Santly; and the handsome son himself was bitterly regretting the engagement that debarred him from ever making the woman he best loved his own; and Beatrix Falkland was crying her- self miserably to sleep in her own room; and Felicia Rawdon, as, with trembling fingers and throbbing heart, she undressed herself that night, found that her favourite handkerchief was missing. It was a bnght, warm afternoon in the middle of July, just two months since the last occurrences I have mentioned, during which time nothing remarkable had happened. Captain Dudley still lingered on with his cousin—having obtained further leave of absence—seeing Miss Rawdon dangerously often ; and Curzon day by day discovered more surely that his heart was no longer in his own possession. Said Stainer to himself this morning: “It is a lovely day. I will go down to Fenton and see—Miss Dorothy,” which was the meanest equi- vocation possible on his part. So he went : and, coming on the little grass parterre at the side of the house, where gaudy, old-fashioned flowers bloomed (in luxuriant pro- fusion, encountered of Miss Dorothy, but her niece Beatrix. COMIC OOOKS. EO in —_)