The Argosy — page 225: what you’re looking at

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

An Every-Day Siory. 213 Mr. Halcroft took her burning hands in his, and told a disgraceful tale. This young Bertram Payne was a gambier. He had (during these few recent weeks of absence) been abroad to where gamblers resort, had won largely, and was come back laden with his gains. ‘It is not true ; I will never believe it,” she broke out, with painful, passionate vehemence. ‘It is quite true, Rosalie,” answered the clergyman, sadly. ‘You shall be convinced of it yourself if you will. In one respect the young man 1s honourable, for he is no liar: when taxed with it by one who had a right to question him, he allowed its truth. My child, you cannot marry a gambler. It is the worst vice, save one, that man can acquire.” ‘No, no, I cannot marry him,” acquiesced Rosalie, rising up with trembling lips and pallid face. Papa, for your sake, for all our sakes, I renounce Bertram Payne.” So Mr. Payne and Miss Halcroft met no more—except at church, where his eyes would dwell on her pale face until it burned with feverish crimson beneath his ‘gaze, though her look was turned away in resolute avoidance ; or when they encountered in the street, where he lingered to meet her, and flushed and trembled: but she passed on with a cold bow. He was too proud to plead, too remorseful to resent, but she knew by intuition as she sat weeping in her chamber, the passionate words of explanation he wrote, and tore, and flung away, and never sent. “Rosalie, I did it for you. I won to win you; I knew it was the surest road to fortune, and fortune sanctions love. Poor, I could not address you ; rich, I might dare to ask. I never remembered it was a sin, I only remembered your sweet words and lovely looks. I never thought of wrong, I only thought of you—Rosalie.” Over and over again these or some such words of excuse were gone over in her mind. They were very near the truth. Only—he had not at first staked to win, but only out of idleness, only from example : when he found he was indeed winning—for he had a strange and wonderful run of luck in the German town—he went on pursuing it, thinking of Rosalie. But, had he explained all this and sued for pardon, what would it have availed against the mild horror of the Christian minister, or the fierce virtue of the village gossips; least of all the shocked pride of his beloved ?: To her maidenly inexperience, the sin of gambling looked so very dark and horrible. The Reverend Mr. Halcroft held an interview with the offender, and there and then cut the cord of the past—and with it the heart’s life of his daughter. Poor Rosalie, striving her best for outward composure, could but weep and droop, and grow more listless day by day, and wring her father’s heart with useless sorrow. At last, despairing of his own treatment, and doubting his knowledge of womanly nature, he wrote a COMIC OO©OLKS _ (CO)