The Argosy — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

79 ore ei) CHARLIE HARDUP GO TO ASCOT: [* you had asked that question of the young gentleman himself, you would probably have received an evasive, not to say equivocal answer. He would most likely have expatiated on his predilection for the national sport, on the peculiarly interesting features of the meet- ing in question (of which, barring what few speculative conjectures he might have overheard at the club, he knew absolutely nothing), or on the social necessity of doing as other people did. But he would never have confessed that the sole object of his intended excursion was the very vague chance of exchanging a word or two with that most capricious of all coquettes, Blanche Anstruther, with whom he was hopelessly in love, and who had as much idea of marrying him as she had of volunteering to be shot from a cannon, like Miss Zazel. Charlie Hardup, indeed, although of an excellent family (the Hardups are reported to date from the Saxon Heptarchy, and, ac- cording to present appearances, are not likely to become extinct), and a popular man enough in his own set, was not exactly what the fashionable world would call a desirable parti. His income, including a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year as clerk in the F. O., barely averaged the annual total of a “monkey ;” while his expecta- tions, beyond a possible legacy of a few additional hundreds from an old maiden aunt domiciled in an obscure village of Devonshire, were positively nil. Master Charlie, however, was one of those sanguine, unreflecting youths who seldom allow prudential considerations to interfere with any pet project they may have formed; and who, in love matters especially, are apt to assume as a matter of course that the sentiments of their inamorata must necessarily be in accordance with their own. He might have married his cousin, who was devoted to him, and de- sired no better than to surrender her pretty self and ten thousand pounds in the Three per Cents. to his keeping ; but even if the idea had ever entered his head, one of Miss Blanche’s killing glances—and she was no mean adept inthe language of the eye—would have sufficed at once to obliterate any impression which the less dazzling, though to most minds more attractive, loveliness of Jessie Stapleton might under other circumstances have made upon him. His acquaintance with General Anstruther’s daughter was of recent date, and had hitherto been limited to a tour de valse in a crowded _ ball-room, or, once or twice during the season, to the privilege—in the absence of any preferable escort—of handing her to her carriage. But €ven these brief opportunities had enabled the young lady to indulge her flirting propensities to their full extent, and to secure, by the ECoOnnicloooks (C©)