The Argosy — page 186: what you’re looking at

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

Lhe Mysteries of Heron Dyke. iy of secrets which as yet were scarcely whispered beyond Mayfair. The ladies of Nullington and its neighbourhood could only envy and admire and imitate afar off. Mrs. Ducie was one of those women whose age it is next to im- possible to guess correctly. ‘‘She’s thirty if she’s a day,” Lord Camberley had said to himself within five minutes of his introduc- tion to her. ‘‘She can’t possibly be more than three-and-twenty,” was Philip Cleeve’s verdict to-day. The truth, in all probability, lay somewhere between the two. Whatever her age might be, Lord Camberley had a great admira- tion for Mrs. Ducie, but it was after a fashion of his own. He was thoroughly artificial himself, and rustic beauty, or simplicity, eating bread-and-butter in a white frock, had no charms for him. He liked a woman who had seen and studied the world of ‘‘men and man- ners;” and that Mrs. Ducie had travelled much, and seen many phases of life, he was beginning by this time to discover. He was on his guard when he first made her acquaintance, lest he might be walking into a matrimonial trap, artfully baited by herself and her brother, for Lord Camberley was a mark for anxious mothers and daughters: not but that he felt himself quite capable of looking after his own interests on that point. Still, however wide-awake a man may believe himself to be, it is always best to be wary in this crafty world ; and very wary he was the first three or four times he visited The Lilacs. He was not long, however, in perceiving that, what- ever matrimonial designs Margaret Ducie might or might not have elsewhere, she was without any as far as he was concerned; and from that time he felt at ease in the cottage. Captain Lennox’s little dinners were thoroughly French in style and cookery. ‘They were good without being over elaborate. Cam- berley’s idea was that the pretty widow, despite her white and delicate hands, was oftener in the kitchen than most people imagined. When dinner was over the gentlemen adjourned to the verandah to smoke their cigars and sip their coffee; while in the drawing-room, the French windows of which were open to the garden, lighted only by one shaded lamp, Margaret sat and played in a minor key such softly languishing airs, chiefly from the old masters, as accorded well with the September twilight and the far niente feeling induced by a choice dinner. Philip Cleeve felt like a man who dreams and is yet awake. Never before had he been in the company of a woman like Mrs. Ducie. There was a seductive witchery about her, such as he had no previous knowledge of. It was not that she took more notice of him than of anyone else ; it maybe that she took less; but he fell under the in- fluence of that subtle magnetism, so difficult to define, and yet so very evil in its effects, which some women exercise over some men, perhaps without any wish or intention on their part of doing so. In the case of Philip it was a sort of mental intoxication, delicious and CoOnnicboooks (CO) im