Argosy, Vol. 1 (December 9, 1882) — page 129: what you’re looking at

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

AN UNSETTLED ACCOUNT. BY MARTIN ORDE. The satisfaction Daunt Ramsey demanded after his mother’s death and the strange compact by which it was to be granted—A substitute for a duel and the ensuing attitude of the challenger. M RS. MORDAUNT RAMSEY was dead. She had been a beauty and a belle, yet of all those who had loved or imitated her, there were only three left to stand over her coffin with an actual sense of loss. To the rest of the world her death stood only for a tragedy completed. In many ways it had even been something of a relief to society, as if, as some one cynically put it, “ for once in her life she had done the right thing.” In truth, society had grown very tired of Mrs. Ramsey and her tragedy. She had been a beautiful girl when she married Mordaunt Ramsey, and she grew into a still more beautiful woman. All went smoothly with her life, and if rumor credited. her with breaking more hearts than was absolutely justifiable, the fact did not score one line on her delicate face. Her two children were very handsome, and she was devoted to them— even worried, perhaps, over Alice’s delicate health and Daunt’s unsteadiness. To her husband she had always shown tact and a discriminating affection which served to cover the real lack of sympathy between them, and she had not been unhappy. That was ten years ago. She thought it all over, as she lay that last day, drifting helplessly down the river toward the unknown—if she had only died then! There had been so many people to be sorry then, and now there were so few! It was a very conventional story, and hardly needs telling. Of course Chris Courtney was to blame with his vague, handsome face and boyish eager- ness of manner. There had been the usual scandal, only worse in this case than usual. Then Mordaunt Ramsey died very suddenly, and everybody waited for the engagement to be announced, and it never was. Poor Mrs. Ramsey. The feet of the Nemesis that overtakes foolish women were on her track pitiably soon. Her daughter Alice, the frail girl with the big blue eyes, had grown frailer and whiter and more miserable eyed than ever during the past two years, and one day she went quietly out of this world into another, peopled only by the fantasies of her darkened mind. Nervous prostration, followed by settled melancholia, the doctors said; but society shook its head and raised its eyebrows. Mrs. Ramsey put Alice ‘into an asylum, and went on taking her afternoon walks with Chris Courtney, with the mockery of golden hair on her forehead and the mockery of paint on her cheeks. GOH GoOOO ‘SS COLNT