The Argosy — page 242: what you’re looking at

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

230 Parkwater. And so, with her eyes open, Sophia May entered voluntanly ona course of deception, and met Captamn Devereux when circumstances permitted. It was a very innocent begmning—as she looked upon it ; but it was destined to lead to a most sad and distressing ending. And in the depth of her after despair, she could not recal one single point of self-excuse or consolation, for it was but her own self-sophistry that had misled her, and her misplaced faith in Captain Devereux. At present all seemed pleasant and easy and mnocent ; these first links of the chain were so light and specious—they generally are so—that she felt them not; or dreamt that it would coil and cou gradually around her until its later lmks became as desperate weights of iron, that would crush her to death, or worse than death, in their folds. It is not a grateful task to record these histories; and this—it has been already said—is a true one. At the best, the tale was but the old tale : one that has been enacted over and over again, and will be until time shall cease. A false man and a credulous woman: a wedding promised for “ to-morrow,” and the to-morrow never came. It is well, oh reader, to tell these stones in the twilight, when the atmosphere is dim, and the voice is lowered to a whisper, and the faces opposite to ours are but imperfectly seen. The world teems with such histones : and though we may profess to ignore them, and shut our eyes to them, there they are nevertheless: and perhaps it is best that some one of them more notable than the rest in its sorrow, or disastrous in its re- sults, may from time to time be recorded, if only in the light of a warning. But in the twilight : in the twilight. CHAPTER VI. SUSPICION. THE weeks and the months went on. Captain Devereux was still an inmate of Parkwater. He could not get away from it. No slave ever longed for emancipation more intensely than he longed to escape and be in the world again ; but he dared not venture to go. Sir Archibald Devereux remained obdurate: one or two dangerous liabilities he did settle; but he would do no more for his hopeful son. That Miss May’s education was superficial and her cultivation entirely unsuited to the charge she had undertaken, would, it is probable, have been long ago discovered, but that chance removed from her the supervision of Lady Tennygal. An illness that proved to be a lingering one attacked Lady Tennygal In autumn, and confined her for some months to her room. Not until February did she begin to get about again. All this while yet had EOMRniilElooe _ SS (CO)