The Argosy — page 260: what you’re looking at

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

weet i om ae ts O SY. APRIL, 188. MRS. RAVEN’S TEMPTATION. CoArTER . XITI, THE SECRET IN THE CHIMNEY. | ny hie shades of evening were gathering fast. Mrs. Raven, hastening along under them, gained her home as fast as her trembling limbs would permit. She was thankful that none of the servants were about the avenue now; the older ones had retired to their sitting-room for rest and gossip, the younger ones were keeping lovers’ trysts in the secluded glades of the park. ‘Though the twilight outside was still golden with the last of the sunlight, the lamps were already burning in the hall, and its doors, and those of rooms opening upon it, stood wide open, in all the sweet gracious security of a pleasant English mansion. Mrs. Raven’s now half-crouching figure, with its irregular steps and outstretched, groping hand, fell upon the peaceful picture like a blot. She went straight to her own room and shut and locked the door, which was something that, surrounded by her well-trained, ceremonious servants, she had never done before. ‘Throwing off her bonnet, she turned to her little étagere where her key-basket usually stood. It was there, but empty. Bewildered by this, she reflected for a moment, and then remembered that being alone, and keeping her own room through the day, she had never changed her dress. She still wore the black merino which was usually discarded for silk and crape before dinner. In the morning, she had slipped the bunch of keys into the pocket of this dress, and there they were still. The words of the strange woman had seemed to indicate that some mysterious message, or warning, would be found written on one of the sheets of note paper (‘‘the fof paper”) which Mrs. Raven had herself put over her laces in the drawer that same morning. If so, then it must have been there when she put it. The costly Bramah locks could not have been tampered with, VOL, XXXIII, R CoOnniclooolks (S(O)