The Argosy — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

176 Court Netherleigh. not talk so. You are young yet, as compared with many people. As, in fact, is my mother.” Margery Upton touched his arm that he should look at her. ‘How do you know I have not an incurable disease? Why should such a thing not fall on me, as well as on your mother ?” Something in the tone, something in the earnest look, struck on him with prophetic fear. ‘‘ Dear Miss Upton !—it cannot be!” he slowly whispered. “Tt zs. Iam dying, Francis. Dying slowly but surely. The pro- bability 1s that I shall go before your mother goes.” He remembered how worn and weary he had thought her looking for some time past; how especially so on this same morning when she stopped him at the door of the Cavendish. He recollected how little she had taken lately to eat and drink. He recalled a sentence, a word, that had fallen from her now and then, seeming to imply that she saw the close of life drawing near. Yet still, with all this pre- senting itself palpably to him with a sudden mental effort, he could only reiterate ‘‘It cannot be!” ‘Tt is,” she repeated. ‘‘I have suspected it for some time. I know it now.” A lump seemed to rise in his throat. How truly he esteemed and valued this good lady, he never quite realized until this day. She re- sumed ‘‘T know that my friends, the few who consider they have a right to concern themselves about me, wonder I should have come up to town so much more frequently during the past few months than I was wont to come. What I do come for.is to see my physician, Dr. Stair. I live too far off to expect him to travel down to me; and the journey does me no harm. I have an appointment with him to- morrow at eleven: after that, I return home.” - “Ts it the heart ?” he asked, drawing a deep breath. “Tt is not the heart: but it is a disorder none the less fatal than some of those diseases that attack the heart. It is about two years now—perhaps not quite so much,” she broke off, ‘‘since I began to fear I was not well. I let it go on for a little time; Frost, our local doctor, did not seem to make much out of it; and then I came up to Dr. Stair. He is a candid, straightforward man, and he plainly said he did not like my symptoms, but he thought he could subdue them and set me to rights. I did get better for a time; the malady seemed to have been checked, though it did not entirely leave me. Latterly it has returned with increased force ; and I know my fate.” The disclosure shocked him greatly, brought to him the keenest pain. “If I could but avert it!” he cried, in sorrow; “if I could but ward it off you !” “No one onearth can do that. For myself, I am quite resigned ; resting, and content to rest, in God’s good hands,” “And, how long ——” COMIC LOOKS, Eo)