The Argosy — page 326: what you’re looking at

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

Si yet A Ep a oe. 7 ae = ae ae we Lady Arabella. 307 in her hotel there, the Marquis arrived. Away to Prague went she but the Marquis was on her track. She went several days’ journey down the Danube, disguised as a peasant, with poor old Mocourt transformed into a spectacled market-woman, the maid’s existence tortured by am unbecoming dress, and John and James attired as huntsmen. ‘To support the character properly, the men drank more beer than was wise, and told the whole story to some English-speaking Germans on board. | A boat passed as Lady Arabella sat on deck, looking in her humble attire like one of the disguised princesses of fairy tales. She beheld the Marquis tranquilly smoking his cigar. He lifted his travelling-cap courteously at sight of her; but she was too weary to enjoy the absurd side of the encounter. Instead of going on to the town where she had intended to stay, she halted at a wretched little village, in which there was no place to sleep, nothing to eat, and no post-horses to carry her forward. ‘The next morning she was informed that steeds were provided and waited in readiness. Away she dashed ; and atthe end of the day learned she had been travelling at the Marquis’s expense! He had sent the horses and paid the bills. Lady Arabella actually cried with vexation. She got to Milan, but de Cherville was there before her. The story of the flight and pursuit had spread, and every tongue wagged in eager recitation. As she passed through the station, worn out, dusty, miserable, with her more miserable train, half the idle people in the town were collected to stare at her. Give inshe would not. ‘The Marquis should be killed with fatigue and worry, though she made a cripple or an idiot of herself in the work. By rail to Bologna, Ancona, Rome. The Marquis: enriched the telegraph by the occupation he afforded it, and saved his laziness a tiresome journey. He went to Genoa, dropped down to Civita Vec- chia by steamer, and met her in the Eternal City, looking as amiable and elegant as if he had just strolled out of his club on the Boulevard des Italiens. The stories followed and grew, but Lady Arabella did not know that the imaginative Romans were adding fresh romance to the chronicle. It was said, and believed, that there had been love passages between the two ; that she had shot him in the Highlands from jealousy. Her train heard all this, but even old Mocourt did not venture to tell her ladyship. She received frequent letters from her pursuer ; encoun- tered him wherever she turned; on the Pincio; in picture-galleries ; everywhere. If she took a box at the opera, he was visible in one opposite. Worse than all, he adopted the plan of doing every sort of courteous thing by her; and she began to understand that, for the first time in her life, she had met more than her match. It annoyed comicbooks.com