The Argosy — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

174 Winifred Power. know, the gracious phantom has vanished ; and, beckoning down the rugged path, stands the austere, veiled maiden called Duty. ‘l'wo or three days of suspense ensued, during which the story of the flight oozed out, and raised a great hubbub round poor Gertrude’s name. ‘Then Mr. Dallas wrote briefly to say that he had found his daughter, and would soon be returning. ‘“With her, of course,” said Mrs. Dallas. ‘* Dear papa! I wonder if we shall like the poor young man.” She pitied Lieutenant Valéry without exactly knowing why. Probably she pictured him to herself as tremendously in love. When Mr. Dallas and his son appeared, however, they had a very unexpected story to tell. Gertrude had run away with the young man not out of love, but from sheer recklessness. Smarting under her father’s reproaches and under the fancied wrongs of years, so exaggerated in her imagination just then, she had quitted her home with the intention of taking refuge in the first instance with the Bonnards. Further than this she did not know what she should do, and perhaps in her excitement did not care. ‘The Bonnards might want to force her back to her home. Such a prospect filled her with fury and despair. In front of the Bonnards’ house she had run up against Valéry, who was leaving it. She had met him several times, and her haughty vanity had been gratified by his evident admiration. In a world which did not appreciate her, even the homage of a French lieu- tenant of foot was a drop of comfort. He stopped in much amazement at seeing her alone at such an hour, not putting the best construction on it. Her confused, passionate answers to his questions only increased his doubts, but he listened to her with that curious mixture of in- credulity and pity which a man of his stamp accords to a woman’s narrative of her wrongs. ‘To make a long story short, he presently proposed to her, perhaps three parts in jest, to accompany him to Lyons. Impelled by some demon of crazy recklessness, she accepted the invitation. She took a savage pleasure in compromising herself in the eyes of her family, and of consequences she had at the moment but a very confused impression. In her inexperience and her arrogance she believed she could keep herself perfectly straight, and defy the world. The alarm, the angry disappointment of her awakening, constituted the bitterest, because the first vea/, lesson of her life. A very few hours of Lieutenant Valéry’s society sufficed to fill her with detesta- tion for him; and she no sooner found herself in Lyons than she ran away for the second time, leaving her companion extremely astonished and aggrieved—feelings later considerably aggravated by the horse- whipping inflicted on him by Mr. Dallas, and for which that gentle- man refused him satisfaction. As for Gertrude herself, the state of repentant excitement in which CORMIGE OOO L<S.(E) m