The Argosy — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

Selina Radcliffe’s Home. 20 ‘He is of good descent; he has a large income i ‘Six hundred a year,” interrupted the Squire, slightingly. ‘Ves, I am aware that it cannot appear much to you,” she meekly said; ‘‘ but to me it seems unbounded. And that is apart from the house and land.” : ‘¢ The house and land must both go to Stephen.” ‘Mr. Radcliffe told mé that.” ‘¢ As to the land, it’s only a few acres; nothing to speak of,” went on the Squire. ‘‘I’d as soon boast of my gooseberry bushes. And he can leave all his money to Stephen if he likes. In my opinion, the chances are that he will.” ‘“ He says he shall always behave fairly by me,” spoke poor Selina. “Why, you’d have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!” put in the old lady. ‘And I don’t like him—that Stephen Radcliffe. He’s no better than he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf a’most to death.” | Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but tractable as you please. Only—she had no homestead on the face of the earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth, it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable descent—and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and, above all, he had a good income. -. It was rather curious that the dread of this girl’s life, the one drea above all other dreads, was that of Joverty. In the earlier days of her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the parson’s pay was just seventy pounds a year, they had had such a terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the child’s mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and weaker, and perished slowly away for the lack of those comforts that money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot’s stipend was increased later: but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her ; and her choice was made. Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, © so to say, in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than old enough to be Selina’s father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs. Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her stand- ing in the county. Sandstone Torr, dull and gloomy, and buried amidst its trees, was enough to put a lively man in mind of a prison. You entered it by a kind of shut-in porch, the outcr door of which was always chained CoOnnicloooks (CO)