The Argosy — page 327: what you’re looking at

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

308 Lady Arabella. her beyond measure to discover that he was wonderfully handsome. Not a day passed without her hearing of words and deeds which proved him possessed of a good head and heart. Altogether she had to fight hard with herself in order to hate him as bitterly as was desirable. She went to Naples—sailed to Sicily. He confronted her on the Via Toledo, and bowed to her in the shadow of Etna, having made her inland journey easy for her, and nearly driven her out of her senses by his kindness. ‘The very flowers she admired in her room were placed there by his orders. All she could do was to fling them out of the window, and then be ashamed of displaying such weakness before so profound a generalship. It was more than a year from the luckless Tuesday on which Lady Arabella and the Irish mare slew Fauvette and maimed the Marquis, that the damsel found herself in Florence. Now, Florence is one of the most bewitching places on this side Paradise. Everybody does what he pleases there, and everybody else talks about it, not in a cen- sorious way, but with frank approval. The world there imputes the most atrocious motives to all actions, thinking it no harm to commit the sins so openly canvassed. The Marquis arrived. Hetook rooms in face of Lady Arabella’s apartments ; sent her bouquets ; followed her carriage on horseback ; quarrelled with a man for nearly being run over by her coachman ; and watched her in her loge at the Pergola. Florence caught up the ro- mantic side of the story, believed it, and discussed it—with additions. There had been a secret marriage; an unscrupulous rival had made trouble at the very altar, by some proof-attested tale of the Marquis’s treachery. Lady Arabella fled in wrath, after a terrible scene, which the story-tellers elaborated with great talent. She had renounced him for ever, rent her wedding-veil, flung the nuptial ring at his feet, and rushed from the sacred edifice, calling down the vengeance of heaven upon her newly-plighted lord. The Marquis wanted an opportunity to clear himself from the ingeniously concocted plot, and whither- soever she journeyed he pursued, besetting her with entreaties and prayers: to which she would not listen. But this narrative, interesting as it was, speedily palled on the jaded appetites of Florentine gossips. They required something more: and so they reversed the incidents in the melodrama. It was Lady Arabella who had been denounced in the church! Some fiend of a woman, whom the Marquis had slighted, hired a villain to trouble their peace ; and he succeeded so well that the Marquis burst away with frightful curses. Since that evil hour he had scoured Europe to escape his bride; but she followed him everywhere, hoping against hope, trusting that time and perseverance might clear up the mystery, or soften the Marquis into a belief in her protestations. Gomicbooks.co