The Argosy — page 321: what you’re looking at

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

Parkwater. 307 the days and weeks went on: saw it with a glowing satisfaction that few could tell of. But May and his wife had suppressed the cause, of their being turned away, from Mr. Fred Lyvett. In fact, they did not presume to allude to past events in any way. Nobody else had enlightened him; and therefore the fact—that they had been turned away through him—had come upon him all the more startlingly from Sophia. He questioned her somewhat mmutely as to her life during the interval of his absence. Sophia parried it as well as she could, but some of the questions she was obliged to answer. For instance, when he said to her one day, What was the name of the nobleman in whose family you lived in Ireland? she could not pretend to have forgotten it; she had to say Lord Tennygal. She left because of her health, she told him ; and after a long respite of country air, when she was staying with an old lady, known to her Aunt Foxaby, she came to the resolve not to be a resident governess again, but to try and get music pupils. And she told it all so artlessly that Fred Lyvett would as soon have thought there was guile or untruth in himself as in her. And thus the months of spring went on. CHAPTER X. WARNING. ONE evening Mr. Lyvett sat at home in his handsome residence at the West End. His wife and daughters were out ; Frederick had not come in to dinner at all: and he, being alone, had dropped off into an after-dinner doze in his easy-chair. The entrance of some one aroused him. He took it to be his younger son. “T say, Fred Oh, it is you, James.” James Lyvett drew a chair near his father. Mr. Lyvett—a very eourteous man, even to his children—-tried to shake off his sleepiness. ‘‘T am paying you a late visit, father,” began James; “but I have just heard something about Fred. It’s not very pleasant. I thought I would come at once and speak to you.” ‘‘ Nothing has happened to him—no accident with that young horse he drives?” exclaimed Mr. Lyvett. ‘‘ He was to have gone with your mother and the girls to-night, but he did not come in.” ‘‘No, no; nothing has happened,” returned James, in a rather im- . patient tone. ‘‘Do you remember that foolish business of Fred geiting himself entangled with old May’s girl, when you shipped him off to Valparaiso ?” “Yes. Well?” returned Mr. Lyvett, now very wide awake. ‘“‘ He is intimate with her again.” CONNEC OOO a) SS (CO)