The Argosy — page 379: what you’re looking at

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

358 Prudence Hart. think I am fond of being found fault with ? —and what are you to me that I should take fault-finding from you ?” And then the colour came to his face, and that last question of hers touched him enough to make his speech fail him. For he had begun by this time (or perhaps had more than begun) to feel a certain secret consciousness that he should like to be something to her: he be- lieved indeed still that there could be nothing serious between them, but he had thought often that he should like to move her to at least a spark of feeling, to awake something different from this mocking and challenging spirit in her. And the young man, who was rapidly grow- ing more in earnest than he yet well knew, was beginning to find that her mocking words had acquired a keen power to sting and wound him. In addition to these pains, too, that she made him suffer, there was another matter that troubled him not a little He was afraid of Godfrey. It was true that his brother always spoke of Prudence in a slighting way, which she on her side returned, and that their inter- course, as far as appeared, was a very easy and indifferent one; but Keith had deep experience in his own case that appearances, where Miss Hart was concerned, were by no means to be received with im- plicit trust, and once or twice at least, if not oftener, it seemed to his eyes (which were perhaps, however, too jealous to see straight) Mat there was more between them than either of them was disposed to confess. Once he thought this so strongly, that he even charged her with trying to make his brother care for her; a bold thing to do, and a very unwise one as well, for, as may be supposed, she rose to the occasion, and routed him with humiliation. | “7 trouble myself about your brother!” she exclaimed, drawing herself up to her utmost height (she was not a tall woman, but many a day she made him feel, for all his six feet, as if she towered far above him). ‘Do you think I should be likely to try to get a boy like that to care for me, when I would not move hand or foot to entice any man alive P” And her scorn was so superb that, carried away by it entirely for the moment, he almost humbled himself in the dust before her to entreat her pardon. So, growing always more and more tender over her, and more enthralled by her, Keith came and went during these spring and summer months—not a very happy man, for neither Prudence nor his conscience gave him an easy time of it, but yet loving the chains he had bound himself with too well even to wish to break them. It was not until August had come that, in plain words, he disclosed the state of his feelings to Miss Hart. Long before that time she had, of course, been perfectly aware of how matters stood with him, for both her natural gifts and her large experiences made any want of comprehension on such a subject quite impossible to her; but it ECONMIELICOO KS. (€©) m