The Argosy — page 190: what you’re looking at

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

Wintfred Power. 173 kind-hearted old Frenchman, looking deeply concerned, took the agitated father aside. ‘‘A French officer of that rank cannot marry unless he deposits 25,000 frs. at the Ministry of War. Valéry has not a sou.” Mr. Dallas looked at him with scared eyes, hardly understanding. The vivid colour, which excitement had brought to his face, slowly receded. ‘The chief point is to pursue them as quickly as possible,” urged Monsieur Bonnard, pressing his hand. Ten minutes later Mr. Dallas and Richard had left the house, taking with them all the money they could scrape together. They were accompanied to the station by Monsieur Bonnard. But on arriving there they found they had just missed the Lyons night express by five minutes; and they had, in consequence, no choice but to wait with such patience as they could until morning. Part of the night was spent in making inquiries ; and they were able to establish with tolerable certainty that a young couple, answering to the description of the fugitives, had indeed started by the express. Winifred meanwhile had lingered a few minutes with the idea of comforting Mrs. Dallas. But to her surprise the little woman needed but slight consolation. ‘¢ Poor dear Gerty, she has been rather headstrong at times of late. Perhaps you may have noticed it?” Winifred, who had never noticed anything else in all the years of her acquaintance with her friend, murmured a vague assent. “Tt often puzzled me,” pursued Mrs. Dallas placidly, ‘‘ puzzled and pained me. But now it is quite explained. The poor child had this love-affair in her head. If she would only have placed confidence in me, I might have made it all smooth with her dear papa.” This new view of Mrs. Dallas, as a person of influence in her own family, severely tried Winifred’s gravity. But the unconscious pathos of it touched her also. She went home with a heavy heart. Even while hoping for the best, she had ten times Mrs. Dallas’s knowledge and experience, and was proportionately removed from the possibility of taking the same sanguine view. And quick of sympathy always, she was more than ever disposed to grieve where Gertrude was concerned. The two girls had been friends from childhood, and Winifred loved the wayward nature that was so far beneath her own. She made excuses for Gertrude’s violent temper, and exalted the fitful generosity which at times redeemed it. For, of all the many illusions of life, what spell is more potent while it lasts, more irrecoverable when it has vanished, than the tender glamour of early friendship? Half-way down the hill of life we look backwards along sunny meads, and onwards into gloom. Above us, there on the flowery slope, appears a radiant form: is it our youth? Is it our early friend? Before we ECORnnicloooks (SO) mn