The Argosy — page 294: what you’re looking at

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

Winifred Power. 273 ‘‘T beg your pardon,” said Mr. Graham, looking rather embarrassed. “You told me, of course, that she is your father’s widow, but I have been so surprised by the strangeness and unexpectedness of all this story, that I do not think I have quite realised every point. I—ah— very stupid of me !—Hatherley? I knew some Hatherleys once, thirty-five years ago, in America.” ‘Those were, perhaps, my father’s cousins,” said Mark, interested. His late necessary examination of many family papers had given him a fuller knowledge of the Hatherley history, and had awakened in him a curiosity to know more about those kinsfolk, in whose hearts, and round whose names, so much bitterness had raged. That long dead-and-gone Esther Hatherley, who had so irrevocably alienated her brother, Mark’s grandfather, by her marriage—had especially attracted the young man’s imagination. For among his father’s old letters were some written when Sir John was himself in America. There were some subtle touches of a soft feeling, almost of tender- ness, in the way he wrote of his cousins, especially of one of them, the eldest, Margaret, with whom it was very plain that old Mr. Hatherley, not without some show of reason, had suspected his son, John, of being in love. Mark, remembering that his own mother’s name was Margaret, had thought that possibly some resemblance in more than the name to his first love, had determined his father’s final choice of a wife. Mark recalled his mother very distinctly, her ethereal beauty, her shadowy grace ; the charm of her gentleness, the pathos of her affliction ; all had remained to him as the most graciously mournful of memories. He had felt her loss as keenly as a reserved and sensitive child could feel; he had cherished the recollection of her all the more that his father had seemed very quickly to forget her. And nobody that Mark had ever met seemed to have known his mother, or was able to tell him anything about her. This mystery, if mystery it was, heightened the poetry of her image in her son’s mind ; and lately, in reading of this other “ Margaret,” he had seemed, although he knew it must be fancy, to gain a clearer image of his mother. He sat silent for a few moments, then addressed Mr. Graham : ‘These Hatherleys that you knew in America, sir; may I ask where they were living ?” ) In Philadelphia.” _ “Then they were my cousins. There were several daughters ?” “Yes: extremely pretty girls. ‘The eldest, Margaret, was beautiful, but she was unfortunately deaf and dumb.” Mark looked so unaccountably startled that Mr. Graham paused for an instant in sheer surprise, then continued : “I was a schoolboy still in those days, but I remember thinking her singularly lovely ; and there was a curious story about her which cna me. She had been, so to speak, only /en¢ to her family.” ment?” CORnNIECOOOKS.EO mn