The Argosy — page 283: what you’re looking at

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

262 Mrs. Raven’s Temptation. work,” insisted Mrs. Sims. ‘I’m not making any mistake about the date. For she was locked in her room, quite early in the evening, and Fanny went knocking at her door, asking questions, knowing what a pretty taste she has in cutting out. Miss Agate made answer she was lying down with a bad headache, but would come down directly she could. And so she did, and showed the girls what to do ; and I am positively sure not one of the girls went out after that.” But, presently, Leonard began to yield to the doctor’s representa- tions concerning the on-coming of his illness, and then a new danger presented itself. He began to dread the return of the phantasm— asa phantasm. For would it not mean another stretch of helpless misery, another step taken downward on the path of disease and death? ‘The doctors scarcely knew what to do. ‘They could not deny his reasoning, yet his fear was the surest means of compassing what he feared. One painful form this fear took was a constant secret doubt of his own perceptions. Did a stranger unexpectedly appear on the lawn, he would ask nervously : “Don’t I see a man in black, or a woman in a shawl?” as the case might be. And Frank would answer, quietly,‘‘ Yes,” and add some little detai) of the stranger’s personal appearance to re-assure Leonard in his own eyes. But he and Mrs. Raven knew what all this meant. Autumn was fairly gone, and winter had come, and the slow weeks had brought none of those vivid changes towards which imagination looks. Leonard came down from his bed-room, and lay on couches. in the public apartments, and grew vexed and urritable over matters he could no longer control, and tried his watchers’ patience and tact, as invalids in this stage always do. They would scarcely have known how to bear their burden, but for the ready wit and skill of Nurse Hannah, still retained, though the local nurse, Mrs. Bray, had de- parted for other cases. Frank felt that he had been quite right in his quick decision that this little quiet woman, who seemed so passionately absorbed in her profession, was not the agent of the detective, wherever that agent might be. There seemed little ground for the popular belief that the woman who had kept Eldred Sloam’s cottage, and who was still said to occa- sionally visit him, was a relation of his dead wife. ‘The boy James could only say that his father had evidently known her before, and, as the lad put it, ‘“‘respected”” her, a filial phrase which Frank trans- lated into “feared” her. Jem himself clearly shared the feeling. And though, during her stay, all the lad’s decent instincts of order, clean- liness and good hours had been fully gratified, yet he seemed glad when she was gone. Eldred himself was moving about again, though not yet fit for work. His clothes had been neatly mended and a considerable EOPMICLOO; KS, EO)