The Argosy — page 252: what you’re looking at

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

Wilful Margaret. 237 frantically dowa the rough sides of the chasm, at the bottom of which Wilfrid Massingham was lying with closed eyes, motionless, as if dead, and with his half-stunned horse a few feet from him. But few signs of life were in the still form when the girl reached it ; she shuddered as she saw the blood oozing from a gash dangerously close to the left temple. A strange, calm self-possession stole over her as she watched George, and some labourers who had witnessed the accident, take a hurdle that was lying near, and place him upon it; her own hands helped to strew it with fern and heather so that he might lie softly. They were not far from the Hall. She walked beside the sad procession alone; George rode off at his best speed for a doctor. “Leave him to me, my dear,” exclaimed the motherly old house- keeper, as he was laid on the bed that had been hastily prepared for him on the ground floor; but Margaret heeded her not. With a face as pale as the deathlike one before her, she stood watching the efforts made to woo back the spirit that seemed about to spread its wings. The Squire, helpless in the sick room, had wandered to the lodge gates, anxious for the doctor. The housekeeper and maids were doing all they could for their master’s injured guest. Margaret seemed lost in a dream. : “For my sake,” she kept murmuring to herself, as the unwonted tears blinded her eyes. She stooped over him to wipe his forehead with her handkerchief; then, carried away by some sudden and un- controllable impulse, she bent over the prostrate form, and pressed her lips to the cruel livid mark on his cheek that had been caused by her hand. Remorse and repentance made her oblivious of the presence of the women; but other eyes than theirs had seen what she did. George, returning with the doctor, was standing in the doorway. “Madge,” he cried, half angrily, half in astonished wonderment, “how impulsive you are! Massingham is no end of a good fellow —but, hang it all, it’s too much to &zss him. What does it mean ?” “It means,” she cried, in a sharp, anguished voice, as she swept past him, “that I have discovered my mistake. I cannot be your wife, George, for I love Wilfrid Massingham.” For several days Wilfrid Massingham hovered on the borderland hat separates life from death, and then the scale turned: nature triumphed. George Wilson, finding that Madge was in earnest in breaking her engagement with him, had left Waverley. Left it boiling over with rage and love—or what he deemed was that passion: for it had sprung to life again with all its old violence when he found that he had lost that which he thought he had gained. Madge treated him so cavalierly that he was compelled to accept his dismissal: and Wild Sorrel was sent to Tattersall’s. Her mistress had vowed never to mount her again. And the time went on. ECoOnnicloOokks (CO)