The Argosy — page 343: what you’re looking at

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

322 Court Netherleigh. off: but she mentally wondered what would have been said had she put on her very finest, or if they saw the stock at home. During the winter Selina had a fever, brought on, it was thought, from exposing herself unduly to damp. She grew better, but was some- what delicate and very capricious. Oscar, loving her intensely, grew to humour her fancies and to pet her as if she were a spoiled child. Her conscience reproached her now and then for the tacit deceit she was enacting, in thus suffering him to live in blissful ignorance of their true position; but on the whole it did not trouble her greatly. Alice, her sensitive sister, would have died under it; Selina con- trived to exist very comfortably. “Tf you found out that I had done anything dreadfully wrong, would you quite kill me, Oscar ?” she playfully said to him one day. ‘Dare say I should,” answered Oscar, putting on a face of mock- severity. ‘‘ Might depend, perhaps, upon what the thing was.” ‘Ah, no; you’d just scold me for five minutes, and then kiss and be friends. I always said you’d never turn out to be an old griffin.” That was the nearest approach Selina ever made towards con- fessing to her husband. And Oscar had but looked upon it as a bit of passing pleasantry. Alice Dalrymple had left her mother’s house to become companion to Lady Sarah Hope. During a week’s visit that Colonel Hope and his wife made to Miss Upton in the autumn—it was soon after they had got into their new house in London—Alice had also been stay- ing at Court Netherleigh. One day Lady Sarah chanced to say: she wished she could find some nice, young gentlewoman, who would come to her in the capacity. of companion; upon which Alice said, ‘“‘Would you take me?” ‘‘Ay, and be glad to get you,” returned Lady Sarah, supposing that Alice had spoken ‘in jest. Alice, however, was in earnest. She could not bear to be living on the charity of Oscar Dalrymple, and she quite believed that her mother, devoted to the care of her poultry, her birds, and her flowers, would not miss her. So the bargain was struck. ‘‘ And please remember, Lady Sarah, that I come to you entirely as com- panion, prepared to fulfil all a companion’s duties, and not merely as a visitor,” Alice gravely said, and she meant it. Selina was vexed when she heard of the arrangement. She went straight down to her mother’s cottage, and upbraided Alice sharply. “Tt is lowering us all,” she said to her. ‘A companion is next door to a servant ; everybody knows that. It will be just a disgrace to the name of Dalrymple.” “Very well, Selina; then, as you think that, I will drop the name,” returned Alice. ‘‘ I was christened Alice Seaton, you know, after my godmother, and I will be called Miss Seaton at Lady Sarah’s.” ‘‘ Stuff and nonsense, child!” retorted Selina. ‘‘You may call yourself Seaton all the world over, but all the world will know still that you are Alice Dalrymple.” ECORNIECLOOOKS EO im