The Argosy — page 267: what you’re looking at

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

250 Court Netherleigh. be seen of his face save his small perky nose standing out of the mass of bright yellow hair which adorned it. “Tt will be so cold,” grumbled Harriet. ‘Think of all these draughts.” “They won’t hurt,” said the laird, who had been bred to such things, his paternal stronghold in the Highlands not, being altogether air-tight. ‘Tl nail some list over the wind-slits, and we'll lay in a good stock of wood and keep up grand fires. It must be as you decide, of course, dear; but Adela can’t be left here alone, and if we say she must go with us to Rome, she may fret herself into a fever.” ‘‘She is doing that as it is,” said Harriet. ‘‘ We mzgh?¢ stay here, of course—and we should get the place for an old song during the cold months. Perhaps we had better remain. Though I should like to have been in Rome for the Christmas festivities, and, later, for the carnival.” } ‘“We will go next Christmas instead of this,” said Sir Sandy. As they had no children they were not tied to their Scottish home and could lay their plans freely. It was decided to remain in the chateau for the winter, and Sir Sandy began hammering at the doors and windows. So they settled down contentedly enough; and, cold though it was in spite of the list and the crackling wood fires, which certainly gave out more sparks than heat, Sir Sandy.and his wife made the best of it. It was more than could be said of Lady Adela. She not only did not make the best of things, but did not try to do so. Not that she complained of the cold, or the heat, or appeared to feel either. All seemed as one to her. Her room was large, its great old-fashioned sofa and its heavy fauteuils covered with amber velvet. Some uncomfortable looking furniture stood about— mahogany tables and consoles with cold white marble tops. The walls of the room were papered with a running landscape, representing green plains, rivers, blue mountains, sombre pine trees, castles, and picturesque peasants at work in a vineyard. In a recess, shut off with heavy curtains, stood the bed ; it was, in fact, a bed-room and sitting-room combined, as is so fre- quently the case on the Continent. In a dress of black silk and crape, worn for Margery Upton, who had died the day after Christmas-day, Lady Adela sat in this room near the wood fire. January was wearing to its close. She leaned back in the great yellow arm-chair in listless apathy, her wasted hands lying inertly on her lap, a warm cashmere shawl drawn round her, and two scarlet spots on her once blooming cheeks. The low fever, that, as predicted by Lady Harriet weeks and weeks ago, she was fretting herself into, had too surely attacked her. And she had not seemed in the least to care whether or not she died of it. COMIC MOO KS, (EO)