The Argosy — page 307: what you’re looking at

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

290 Lyna. eathered strength in drinking in the light that laughed on me from her eyes, and strolled with her in the Devon woods or floated with oar and sail amid the dream-like loveliness of the Dart. She had the kindest, tenderest, gayest temper all the time that — raine was still but the ghost of a life ; but as I changed gradually to something more nearly resembling my old self, Erna began to change too, and was presently almost the same strange provoking girl I had known in the days when I laid my heart at her feet only to be tram- pled on. I would not repeat the folly; to be scorned once by any lips, however lovely, was enough. We were alone in the garden one morning, and I was thinking this, and at the same time how rare was the beauty of her face, when she looked up and our eyes met. She did not blush, or turn from the glance that I was bending on her, but only smiled mockingly—a smile that passed next moment into a laugh, as wickedly provoking as herself. I was turning away, hurt, I scarcely knew why, when she stopped me with an imperious bidding. ‘“‘ Gerald,” she said, “if you care to come with me to the Win- stanley room, I am just in the humour for telling you its legend. I can tell it nowhere but in the room itself.” ‘The haunted chamber ?” I questioned, indolently. ‘‘ I’m not in the humour, Erna, if you are; the morning’s too bright to be spent anywhere but out of doors, and the story’s certainly old enough to keep. I’m for staying here in this glorious old garden, and lancying it Eden, and you its Eve.” “Stay, then,” she said, witha pout, and moved away. I watched her passing farther and farther from me towards the house. Great roses were all about me, the air was faint with the odours of the honeysuckle, and overhead thick branches drooped caressingly, and only left here and there an opening for the burning sun to shine through. In a moment, it seemed to me, ail would be erey and drooping ; for in a moment more all that made the garden fair to me would have passed from it with her. She turned, however, as she reached the green, broken steps that led up to the terrace before the house, and seeing me rise and move towards her, hesitated a moment, and then came slowly back. “So you are coming, after all,” she said, ungraciously. “Ves I’m coming,” I echoed. “And [ll listen patiently to any- thing you like to inflict on me, Erna, beginning with the ghost that walks at night in * ‘‘Winstanley’s ghost, you mean,” she interrupted. ‘“ He does walk —he has been seen at least once in every generation of Heathcotts since the time of his master, Geoffrey Heathcott. You laugh at me,” she continued, a flash of defiance in her great eyes, ‘but I tell you I de believe in him— in his haunting the house where his death was the cause of his master’s.” “Why should he haunt it? It can’t bea pleasure to him, I should ECOPMIC LOO KS, (E00)