The Argosy — page 378: what you’re looking at

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

Prudence Hart. 357 advice were necessary) as ought to be looked for from an-elder son and brother. Without further loss of time, therefore, he set him- self about this virtuous work, and continued it with laudable per- severance through week after week of the advancing spring and early summer, for it proved to be an undertaking of an arduous sort, requiring (or, at least, so he thought) much time for its due carrying out. As these weeks went on, Prudence showed herself to him in various moods. He saw a good deal of her, and she was sometimes (though not often) silent and demure; she was generally irritating and more or less mocking ; she was occasionally gentle and womanly ; and in all her moods, except perhaps the first, she got the better of him. They had many encounters together, and she beat him in every one of them. She was ten times cleverer than he was—ten times readier —ten times more daring. And he said to himself again and again, «She is not the kind of woman they think she is; she is not such a girl as it can do Mabel any good to be intimate with; if my mother knew her as I do she would not let her stay in the house:” and yet, though he knew all this, he presently lost the power of opening his lips. to make the others know it; for before he had been acquainted with Miss Prudence for a couple of months, the poor young fellow was in love with her. @he had got him in the toils before he had even begun to suspect his danger. Pretty soon indeed he began to be conscious that she was acquiring a certain power over him. He knew that she was filirt- ing with him, but he could not help offering himself to be flirted with : she drew him to her by an attraction that he did not understand, but which he hardly tried to resist: he thought he was studying her, not suspecting that while he was at his clumsy labours she had learnt Az out and out, and could see through him as through a glass window. After a very short time had passed, he began to take advantage of every opportunity he could find for being with her, and he was un- comfortably conscious that he seized these opportunities as secretly as he could, and almost conscious (uncomfortably too) that she per- fectly understood his method of procedure, and entirely sympathised with it. “You never talk to me before other people,” he said to her once, only half displeased at the demure manner that she always adopted towards him in public, and yet, for conscience’ sake, half troubled at it: but, when he made this accusation, she gave a little laugh, and— ‘** Well—shall we have our next conversation before them all ?” she answered instantly. ‘7 am quite willing, on my side. Suppose we come to the drawing-room now, and let your mother have the pleasure of hearing you reproach me for my silence—and my other faults.” “You always get the better of me,” he replied. “If I ever ven- — ture to blame you for anything you always turn the tables on me.” “ And what else would you have me do?” sheasked. ‘‘ Do you Cconnicooolks (S(O)