The Argosy — page 230: what you’re looking at

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

218 An Every-Day Story. f7e listened in silence—possibly contrasting bitterly the two women— pressing his child’s soft cheeks to his, caressing her golden hair; bending his proud head to catch her sweet whispers, with the lovelight Rosalie knew so well shining in those wonderful eyes, under their drooping lashes, upon his little daughter, whose innocent caresses kept his soul alive. She watchedit all. Never had Bertram Payne seemed to her so beautiful, so dear ; her whole heart went out towards him, as he bent over his baby’s face. There was a look of suffering and con- quest upon his brow ; lines of pain and struggle were graven deeply there—marks of sorrow past, of combat won, that purified and ennobled. his features beyond their mere beauty. He seemed to her partial and yet experienced eyes the type of the ideal for which her girlish heart had pined, which her womanly soul had yearned for all these years. Pure, faithful, fond, there he sat in her sight, crowned with his perfect manhood, and worthy of her love as she had dreamed he was so many weary years before. The thoughts of those years came back to her as she sat ; even the very words that she had then longed to go and pour forth to him in what she took to be his shame and his sin. ‘“Though the whole world forsake you, Bertram, I am true; though you be stained and shameful, I will weep you clean; though you may be deserted, I will cling to you; though you be despised, I will honour you; though you be ruined, I will exalt you; though none else may, with all my heart, and soul, and being, I will worship you still, my adored, my prince, my lord!” Ah, the foolish enthusiasm of our youth! It was all over now, however, and they sat there under the cares and the realities of the world, cold-mannered, cautious, as the world’s best men and women. And what were his thoughts ? She could not tell, but her imagination pictured them as perhaps they were. There could be no mistake that his love for her was still fresh and green: that he would give much to be able to clasp her innocently for one single moment to his aching heart. Mr. Payne raised his drooping eyes, and met hers, with a long, long, yearning look. It seemed to tell her all the past. The days of | childish heartbreak, the nights of sleepless pain, the perpetual feverish longings, the constant burden of despair. And then the gradual stupor of patience; the numb _ indifference, the cold languor that followed; succeeded at length by the life of calm repose, of gliding ease and polished luxury, of half-satishied content, of real indifference : the whole somewhat of a dream, a trance, a sleep. Yes, yes, they read each other well. The lady in the arm-chair saw nothing of this emotion ; she was quite unconscious of being the third party in a scene, the spectator to a silent, sad drama of memory. Having talked to her satisfaction, and twirled her bracelets and her rings while doing it—mnof unconsciously, ecomniclooolkks (CO)