The Argosy — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

Winfred Power. 17 wague awe, Never before had he so looked at her; and recalling the mystic change that sometimes precedes death, she wondered whether it were some prescience of his end that now filled her father’s eyes with that strange regretfulness. She laid her hand on his wrinkled, trembling fingers, generally so nerveless, and felt them close kindly, although feebly, round her own. “Vou are like your mother to-night, my dear, it seems to me,” he said. ‘‘Or perhaps it is only that I have been living all day in the past.” “Can I do anything for you, father? Is there anything you want?” asked Mary, oppressed by the silence and by her own un- wonted emotion. Her shallow nature could not long bear the strain of a painful feeling. She wished he would take those wan, solemn, regretful eyes from her face. “T have thought of you a great deal to-day,” he resumed, the senile trembling of his lips increasing as the slow words came through them; ‘‘of you and Will. I have been reading his last letter ; that one in which he says he is about to marry. You remember?” “Yes; you said it was certain to be a marriage to disgrace us,” said Mary jealously, for there had been scant love between herself and her younger brother, and she had no desire to see him reinstated in her father’s favour. ‘“ Ay,” answered Mr. Hatherley; ‘I said so, I remember. But things seem different now. I should like him to be happier than he has been.” | “He does not deserve much happiness that I can see,” replied Mary, too angry now for tenderness. ‘““T have been unjust to him, and not generous to you, my dear. I was Over-persuaded.” “By John?” cried Mary, asudden light breaking upon her. “Yes,” he answered musingly. ‘‘ John is hard, but I thought him just, and I had faith in him until now. Lately ——” He paused, and his head drooped again. Mary was livid with excitement at the thought of the danger she had barely escaped— nay, which, perhaps, still hung over her head. Should she tell that secret something she knew of her brother, or would silence be wiser ? Resentment and self-interest alike urged her to speak. ‘Father, I have a thing to tell you—a secret of John’s,” she said, grasping the old man’s arm in the intensity of her eagerness. He lifted his eyes to hers, but they had a wandering look which alarmed her. \Vere the shades of death already obscuring his tardily- awakened conscience? Was he drifting away so fast that her touch could no longer detain, her voice no longer reach him? Ina spasm of fear she fell on her knees beside him. “I should like to reverse the will,” he murmured. ‘But perhaps I have no time.” The whispered, mournful words sickened Mary. What had he VOL, XXXvV. Cc EORnnicloooks (CO)