The Argosy — page 361: what you’re looking at

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

338 Mrs. Raven's Temptation. ‘Yes, he seemed to think she was somebody whom he had injured. He caught hold of her hand, and she, naturally enough, drew back. Sir, at that moment the old scene of the summer evening at the gate rose before my mind, because it seemed repeated before my eyes! Repeated, and yet transposed. ‘The pleading agony of that unhappy girl, Hester Walker, seemed to have entered into Eldred Sloam, and a woman with the features of Hester Walker was spurning him as he had once spurned her! I read my riddle. Evelyn Agate had the face of Hester Walker, but the expression and the hair of this man, Sloam. ‘Think of him, even as you saw him to-day. Can you not see a likeness?” ‘Tt is hard to say whether or no, when one gets a preconceived idea,” said Mr. Connell. ‘But then, if there is anything in your theory, where is Hester Walker herself? And who is she ?” ‘“‘T think she is Evelyn Agate’s mother, wheresoever she may be.” ‘But, even supposing this to be a fact, I don’t see how it bears on the present position of things. It does not supply a motive. If Evelyn Agate be the daughter of this man—even if she knows she is his daughter—how could the death of Frank Raven serve her?” “Tt might be malice,” mused the Vicar; “a kind of wild revenge for the wrong done to her father by his unfortunate birthright. But I don’t set much by that possibility. Id rather look for some motive nearer hand, perhaps mercenary. Under that strange will of his father’s, if Frank should die before his mother, the fortune is at her own disposal. Could the girl hope to ingratiate herself into the vacant place P” | ‘Tt is too dreadful to contemplate !” exclaimed Mr. Connell. ‘Well, well,” said the Vicar, himself recoiling from the picture he had conjured up; “but at any rate this fact of her birth—if it be a fact—would bring her within the range of motives which could not affect an utter stranger. Most crimes have a motive—nay, I believe all have.” ‘One thing I must do, and that at once,” said Mr. Connell: ‘telegraph to Philip to go to the house of his friend Miss Agate, and break this terrible news to her, and then come down here as quickly as possible. I must telegraph home, too. One never knows how soon the newspapers may get hold of these rumours.” “Could not Mrs. Connell come here to bear Mrs. Raven com- pany ?” asked the Vicar, as the two gentlemen walked together down the avenue; “‘ Mrs. Connell, or one of her daughters? Poor Mrs. Raven is in a terrible position—one son hopelessly .ill, the other scarcely escaped from the shadow of death, and a favourite companion likely to be arrested on a charge of murder !” But Mr. Connell shook his head. ‘“ My daughter, Louisa, is very ill,’ he answered; ‘‘very weak and ill, and her worst symp- toms are nervous ones. Her mother cannot possibly leave her. In fact, we were just on the wing for the Continent, as change is all Gomichbooks.com