The Argosy — page 317: what you’re looking at

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

300 Lady Arabella. Earl was glad to compound for so innocent an eccentricity, and Paris regarded it as another specimen of British insanity. But in less than a week the soothing effects of Mrs. Mocourt’s missive were done away by an act on the young lady's part which caused tele- graphs and newspapers to be busy with her name, and made her stared at when she appeared in public. The Marquis de Cherville had for some time past devoted himself to training a filly for his sister, pretty Madame de B. , the most timid of equestrians, and graceful of women. The Marquis was really a charming specimen of the gilded youth of the noblest faubourg, but he had never succeeded in ridding himself of one prejudice—he de- tested the daughters of Albion. And of those daughters he held the Lady Arabella in special abhorrence. The autumn previous the Marquis had stayed at a friend’s house in the Highlands. During the first days of his sojourn the Lady Arabella Grahame was there also. Her great wolf-dog nearly ate him up as he descended at the door, and the unreasonable damsel hated him in con- sequence. ‘They would never be introduced to each other; both de- clined it ; and while she remained she excelled herself in outré opinions and performances, in order to horrify her enemy. She nearly shot him by accident one morning when she was handling a pistol. That put the climax on all. Naturally, he neither forgot nor forgave. The young lady’s name had the same effect on the Marquis that a red rag has on a mad bull. He charged full tilt at Albion and its maids with bitter anathemas. In return, Lady Arabella made his title synonymous with everything silly or effeminate ; whatever she wished to stigmatize as utterly unendurable she denominated a “de Cherville.” As they had scores of mutual friends both in England and France, of course each heard all the harsh criticisms pronounced by the other, and was spurred on to increased enmity. | On an ill-fated Tuesday the Marquis was exercising the filly in one of the broad alleys of the Bois. He was in an especially amiable mood and in the most stylish possible costume—altogether quite a modern Apollo. Rush—whiz—flash, out of a narrow path that made so short a turn that nobody but a maniac or an Englishwoman would have rid- den fast around it, darted Lady Arabella Grahame on the back of her fiend of an Irish mare. She saw nothing, and she could not have checked the mare if she had seen. Like a cannon-ball, the Hibernian fury dashed against the filly, knocked her down, and added a vicious kick. When the Marquis could realize anything, he found himself lying on the ground, with his shoulder-blade broken, and the poor filly dying. | Only Spitfire’s strength and her mistress’s quickness prevented their also having an ugly tumble. On they dashed, like a female imperson- Gomilecbooks.co