The Argosy — page 268: what you’re looking at

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

Wimfred Power. | 249 arose from the girl herself. She was so absolutely frank and un- compromising; so devoid of coquetry; so bent upon convincing rather than conciliating, that her mother was secretly in despair. For the rest, she had her hands full: for if Sir John would not fall a captive to her bow and spear, there was another who would, and did. And that was Mr. Burton, the Rector. He was a rich and childless widower, and one of those slow, heavy, honest men who think that no man can be expected to comprehend women. ‘Their airs and graces, their nerves and fancies were to him just as recondite as their articles of costume. Zey recognised the wrong side of a mantle from the right, and pronounced the front of a bonnet to be its apparent back. It was to be presumed conse- quently that they knew also what they meant when weeping or blush- ing unaccountably, or saying one thing while thinking another. All a man had to do was to take things quietly as long as he was provided with his dinner. ‘These being his ideas, it may be imagined that he was wax in the hands of a charming woman like Mrs. Fane. It was a perfect comedy to watch his face when she was talking to him, pouring out, with her enchanting smiles and various waves and nods of her pretty head, the clap-trap second-hand ideas in which she delighted. She talked to him of Baudelaire (of whom, fortunately, he had never heard); of early Italian art; of stained-glass windows and the de- generation of modern morals. Now he thought he had understood her, now he was afraid he hadn’t ; now he had the dawn of a suspicion that if he did, he would not approve of her. But as she invariably wound up with some sentiment of extreme propriety, he would smile upon her, reassured that her nimble intelligence had outstripped his stolid one. » Still, the Rector of Elmsleigh could not approach Sir John Hatherley in a worldly point of view, and Mrs. Fane spent many an evening in the drawing-room at The Limes; walking thither after dinner. Sir John, by the light of a shaded lamp, sometimes dropped majestically to sleep over some huge folio while talking with her ; Dolly and Florence played backgammon ; and Mrs. Hatherley kept a stealthy and not too well-contented watch upon Winifred and Mark. They had drifted into the habit of talking almost exclusively to one another. Mark, attracted by her frank friendliness, spoke more freely to her than to most people. She learnt with surprise that while Sir John was still supposed to have a share in business operations of some magnitude, Mark was entirely excluded from all knowledge of them. Unable to remain idle, he had invested the little fortune in- herited from his mother in certain mines, and occasionally made journeys to the North in consequence. With her quick perception, Winifred divined that Mark felt the distance at which his father kept him. There was indeed a slight constraint between the younger and the elder man. Mark, Winifred guessed, would have loved his father could he have fully understood him; and he was studiously respectful ECOMICOOOKS. EO