The Argosy — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

Lhe Grey Cottage. 143 “Ten degrees below freezing point last night, and colder to-night,” I thought to myself. ‘‘ What shall we come to?” Turning round again to look at the dancing, I noticed how very pale they appeared, and how singularly quiet. Why had they ceased talking? As Cecily glided past me, I was struck by her face _ It was white as marble, and her blue eyes were strangely distended and fixed with a puzzled kind of fascination on Mrs. Goldsmith. Mine followed them. ‘That lady was moving through the figure in her stately manner, the cushion still in her arms, and a fixed smile on her lips ; and by her side—now, was it an overwrought brain or was I dreaming? Surely the latter, for I felt no surprise, no alarm —there danced by her side a little old man ! Everything seemed in a mist now, as though the night were foggy, and the fog had got into the room, so I could not see the stranger clearly. The music sounded muffled, and my thoughts went back to former nights in London, when the thick yellow vapour enveloped the streets, and link boys were out, and conductors led omni- buses, and people shouted with hollow voices. It seemed hours since I began to play that set of Lancers. This old man was dressed in a long grey coat, with a little cape, and a white spotted neckerchief loosely tied, and he carried a thick stick in his hand. He danced in an old-world fashion, executing his steps with great precision, and making formal bows to his partner and the rest of the company. Just then Mrs. Goldsmith laid the cushion back on the sofa; shivering apparently with cold, she took. up a scarf, and wrapped it closely round her, dancing all the time. It was now the grand chain in the last figure, and for a moment or two I lost sight of the old man. Suddenly there was a wild scream —the dance stopped—Cecily had fainted ! A medical man, Mr. Brook, was of the party. He attributed .Cecily’s attack to the intense coldness of the weather, and to the morning’s skating, when she must have over-fatigued herself. The depression most of them had felt during the last set of quadrilles he put down to the same cause—unusual cold. Cecily continued very poorly the following day. She confided to me privately her extraordinary impressions of the previous evening. I found them to be similar to my own; but I mentioned nothing to her about myself, and laughed a little. “But I did see the old man, Aunt Cameron,” she persisted. ‘He was by Mrs. Goldsmith’s side.” | I would not listen. On the contrary, I treated the matter entirely from a common-sense point of view; endeavouring to persuade her that the whole thing was due toan overwrought imagination. Indeed I was by no means sure that such was not the case. It was more likely that our brains, hers and mine, should have worked in the same groove, been “en rapport,” as the mesmerists would have expressed it, than that we should really have seen an apparition. We are all COMIC OOO SS (CO)