The Argosy — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

In the Dead of Night. 9 ten years of her widowhood, but she remained steadily faithful to the memory of her first love, and when she died her husband’s name was the last word on her lips. His mother died when Lionel Dering was eighteen years old, six months after his younger brother, Richard, had gone to India to carve out for himself that mythical fortune which every enthusiast of eighteen believes must one day infallibly be his. Lionel had been brought up to no business or profession. While still a youth at school, a great part of his holidays had been spent at the Langshaws’ farm, three miles out of Cheltenham, where he was always a welcome guest. Here he learnt to ride, to drive, to shoot, and to take an interest in all those outdoor avocations which mark the due recurrence of the seasons on a large and well-managed farm. But when his school-days were really at an end, both Lionel and his mother were utterly at a loss to decide in which particular groove the young man’s talents—genius Mrs. Dering called it—would be likely to meet with their amplest and most speedy recognition, Truth to tell, the widowed mother trembled at the idea of parting from her favourite boy, of letting him go out unprotected into the great world, so full of wickedness and temptation, of which she herself knew so little, but about which she had heard such terrible tales. So week passed after week, and month after month, and Lionel Dering still stayed at home with his mother. An inquiry was made here and there, a letter written now and then, but all in a half-hearted sort of way, and Mrs. Dering never heard the postman’s knock without trembling lest it should be the herald of a summons which would tear Lionel from her side for ever. When, at last, the dreadful summons did come in the shape of the offer of an excellent situation in India, Mrs. Dering declared that it would break her heart if Lionel left her. She was a very delicate little woman, be it borne in mind, and Lionel, who loved her tenderly, fully believed every word she said—believed that her heart would really break if they were separated—as in all proba- bility it would have done. “I won’t leave you, mother—I won’t go away to India,” said Lionel, as he kissed away her tears. “You might let me go, mother, instead of Li,” said Richard, as he too kissed her. “If you love me, mother, let me go.” So Richard went to India in place of his brother, and Lionel still stayed at home. Six months later, Mrs. Dering, who had been a par- tial invalid for years, died quite suddenly, and Lionel found himself, after the payment of all expenses, with about fifty pounds in ready money and no ascertainable means of earning his own living. In this emergency, a certain Mr. Eitzenschlager, a German merchant, who had met Mrs. Dering in society some five or six years previously, and had fallen in love with her to no purpose, came to the rescue by offering Lionel a stool in his counting-house, at Liverpool. But to COMICOOoOlKS.EO