The Argosy — page 206: what you’re looking at

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

The Burgomaster’s Daughter. 189 races a ruin, but the woods above and around were glorious, and the summer weather, the clear, sparkling air, the bright blue sky, all lovely and wondrous exhilarating. The rooms in the chateau were large and lofty, and comfortably furnished with a quaint mixture of modern appliances and ancient tapestry, old cumbersome arm-chairs, and foxes and wolves’ skins for carpets. His visits of ceremony over, the Baron gave pic-nics and balls to all the neighbourhood. And these had a piquancy in them wanting to other parties, inasmuch as they were presided over by a charming young nobleman, handsome, and a bachelor. Il. ‘So Monsieur Warenne has gained the dearest wish of his heart,”’ said one old lady to another; ‘‘he will really have a gentilhomme his son-in-law.” «A gentleman! Of what are you talking, my dear? The Baron means nothing by these attentions to Lucille. And if the poor girl had a sensible man for a father, instead of a fool, he would not allow her name to be compromised by these flirtations.”’ ‘Then you think the Baron is not in earnest ? Monsieur Warenne, you know, is rich; he will give his daughter a good dower.” ‘Rich! Yes; but he is a brewer; and you don’t know the Baron asI do. He is horribly proud of his lineage; he has ‘ blue blood’ in him; he is more than half a Spaniard.” “Hush! Here he comes, and Lucille with him. Ah! they have not seen us.” And both old ladies gathered in their skirts within the bower in which they sat, and craned beneath their necks to look after the young couple, who sauntered down a long alley of lilacs and seringas. The scene of the talk was the wilderness of a garden at Resteigne, and the time was the day of a grand féte-champétre given 7 the Baron to his friends. The Belgians are a straitlaced people. They carry their ideas of propriety to such an extreme length that pure-mindedness is a thing unknown. Floating, therefore, in society of all classes, is a vast amount of scandal of the coarsest kind. The restrictions of an - etiquette so strict that it borders on the immodest, do not encourage innocence either of thought or of speech. Hence it can be imagined with what horror these Belgian Mrs. Grundys beheld the pale and pretty Lucille Warenne strolling down the leafy avenue alone with the Baron d’Harscamp—no, not quite alone, here is her father leisurely following her ; but then he is not near enough to ‘hear their conversation ; and the Mrs. Grundy of Belgium being an exceed- ingly pious and moral old lady, demands that every word an inno- cent girl utters shall be distinctly heard, and all her actions shall be properly spied into. CONNIEClOO© SS (CO) am =)