The Argosy — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

Checkmate in Ten Moves. 67 of peace, to be constantly on our guard not to display a token of close friendship in her presence. Madame loved the child both for her own sake, and for his who had left her to her charge; and it vexed her so to see Mariette’s dimpled cheek flushed with passionate tears, that I endured a great deal rather than provoke them. Of course, the more we gave way to her jealousy, the more exacting it grew; and, at last, it drove me to seek another shelter. I could not always avoid a collision; my tongue sometimes got the better of my good resolves; and, hearing of this situation in North Germany, which combined several advan- tages, I released Mariette from my obnoxious society. To do her justice, when she found what she had done, she was all tears of penitence, and, in the prettiest English at her command, entreated me to stay. I took her apologies in good part, but went my way all the same. And now, in the hour of my perplexity, Eleanor wrote to propose I should return. Her reason was simple enough. The exigencies of the war had deprived the school of their cleverest professor—a young Bavarian, who taught both music and German. ‘The situation was open, and so were her arms—Mariette sent her love, and hoped I would come. I lost no time in proceeding to Trois Etoiles. The papers were then full of the earliest encounters between the armies, and everybody was talking about France having been first in striking a blow. Right glad was. I when the heat and dust of travelling were at an end, and I was welcomed once more to my favourite quarters. How cool and bright and pleasant it all looked, and how refreshing was the good English cup of tea which Eleanor herself prepared! Mariette came forward to assist in the pouring and handing, pressing me to. partake, with the assurance that the water had boiled furiously—and the tea. had been sent from London. “Grown there, too, perhaps?” suggested I, ‘‘among other evil things that are meant to ruin France?” ‘Ah, no, no,” she said, with a quick shake of her pretty head, “if France is to be ruined, the fault will all beher own. England’s advice was good, and if it had been taken, all this need never have been.” There was a quiver in her voice that startled me, and Eleanor quietly turned the conversation. Observing Mariette attentively, I was struck with a change in more respectsthan one. Brook and river were just meeting when I went away; she had gone some miles between the river banks since then, and the current had grown more rapid, and the rocks more prominent. ‘The spoiled child had become a woman of passionate feeling, and all the tenderness of those who loved her had not shielded her from suffering. And the suffering, whatever its cause, seemed, in one respect, to have softened her nature; her jealousy of me had disappeared. I enquired after old acquaintances and friends—and how the new Maire liked the toils of his office, knowing from Eleanor’s letters that a friend of (SO) COnnicooolks