The Argosy — page 297: what you’re looking at

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

278 Mr, Landon. He smiled at her very kindly. ‘ You will delight in the life,” he said. ‘‘T think I see you there now—I know how you will like it.” ‘But you won’t take me there wv/ess I like?” said Mabel timidly, and with her heart beating very fast. ‘My darling, I will take you mowhere unless you like,” replied he, with the sweetest smile. But, for the first time, it struck Mabel that there was a cold PREIS A os lurking beneath that boyish sweetness, and she turned faint and sick, though the next moment she told herself it was folly, and worse than folly, and hated herself for taking up such a notion: Then he began telling her about the Highland castle he hoped to buy, where she would reign a sort of chieftainess, and play the ‘‘ Lady Bountiful” to all the poor Scotch people about them. “We will build a church, if there is none near,” he said, “and schools, and model cottages, and everything that can be thought of to make people wise, and good, and happy.” “That will be delightful,” said Mabel. | ‘And we will employ them ; we will not let them be idle; we will find them plenty to do—and then give them balls, and fétes, and dinners, and feasts, so that the play element of our nature may have full development also. We will not be satisfied with their being only industrious and well-behaved, ozrv poor people shall be happy.” ‘How good and kind he 1s,” thought Mabel; ‘“‘there certainly zs no one like him in the world.” She raised her eyes, beaming with love, to his face, on which the now fully-risen moon shed her cold myste- rious light, and there, though she could hardly say how or why, she beheld something that reminded her of the horrible grimaces that she had several times seen him make. He was wot making them, and yet his countenance did not look quite natural, or like itself; the dreadful shape into which his features could be twisted, and, even more, the dreadful expression that came with that shape, seemed in some strange tremulous way to be lurking behind the normal face, and to be a real existence, only waiting to be called into sight; not a mere action caused by a voluntary play of the muscles. She felt unreasonably frightened, and as if she could not bear to look at him more, and yet an odd fascination kept her eyes fixed on his face ; and then it seemed to her as if he, too, knew of that existence im- patient to usurp the place of his natural face, and that the knowledge made him uneasy under her gaze. ** By Jove!” he exclaimed suddenly, and put his hand tp to his mouth, turning from her as he did so. And Mabel, unable to control herself longer, fled wildly towards the house. She went to her own room to compose herself, and, pacing up and down the floor in a bewildered state, told herself over and over again that she was either the most unfortunate or the most foolish girl in the world. When at last she felt courage and calmness enough to go down Gomicbooks,.c¢o