The Argosy — page 269: what you’re looking at

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

252 Court Netherleigh. precious, living tie between them, his and hers, he could not have thrust his wife away from him. Oh, surely, surely ! had that poor child but lived, he would have exercised compassion. ‘Thus she would lie, tormenting herself with deceitful fantasies that could never be, and ~ wake up with a shudder to the miserable reality. Enough of the fever lingered yet to tinge with hectic the cheeks of her white face, and to heat her trembling hands. But for one thought Adela would not have cared whether she died or lived—at least, she told herself so in her mind’s misery ; and that thought was that, if she died, her husband might take another wife. A wife who would give him back what she herself had not given—love for love. Since Miss Upton, perhaps unwittingly, had breathed that suggestion, it had not left Adela night or day. How bitterly she regretted the past none knew, or ever would know. During these weeks of illness, before the fever and since, she had leisure, and to spare, to dwell upon her conduct in it; to repent of it ; to pray to Heaven for pardon for it. The approach of possible death, the stinging presence of hopeless misery, had brought Adela to that Refuge which she had never sought or found before, an ever-merciful God. Never again, even were it possible that she should once more mingle with the world, could she be the frivolous, heartless, unchristian woman she had been—not to speak of graver sins. Nothing in a small way had ever surprised Lady Harriet so much, as to find Adela get out her Bible and Prayer- book and keep them near her. She sat to day, buried as usual in the past, the bitter anguish its remembrance always brought her rending her soul. We are told in holy writ that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The heart of woman is undoubtedly contradictory. When Adela was Mr. Grubb’s wife she had done her best to scorn and despise him, to persuade herself she hated him: now that he was lost to her for ever, she had grown to love him, passionately as ever man was loved by woman. ‘The very fact that relations between them could never be renewed but fostered this love. For Lady Adela knew better than to deceive herself with vain hopes; she knew that to cherish them would be the veriest mockery, that when Francis Grubb threw her off, it was for ever. Many a moment did she spend now regretting that she had not died in the fever. It would at least have brought about a last interview ; for Harriet would have kept her word and sent for him. ‘Better for me to die than live,” she murmured to herself, lifting her fevered hand. ‘I could have died happily with his forgiving kisses on my lips. Whereas to live is nothing but pain ; weariness— and who knows how many years my life will last ?” Davvy came in; a tumbler in her hand containing an egg beaten up with wine and milk. Davvy did not choose to abandon her mistress in her sickness and misfortunes, but Davvy considered ECOPMIECOOO; KS, Eo) m