The Argosy — page 295: what you’re looking at

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

274 Winifred Power. “Yes, She had become deaf, and consequently dumb, through some accident ; I forget the details, but I know it happened when she was only about two years old. MHer father, who up to that moment had adored her as his fiyst-born, took up a most unnatural aversion to her. One has heard of men who possess this shrinking from physical imperfection ; sometimes it runs in families.” ‘Tt apparently ran very much in ours,” said Mark. ‘' My grand- father I know had it, to the same extent probably as his brother.” ‘“‘“Ah! in the case of poor Margaret Hatherley the consequences were less evil than might have been feared. For she touched the heart of a rich eccentric widower, who adopted her and gave her his name. And asthe years went on his love for her became a kind of monomania, so that he could not bear people to know that she was not his child. He tried in every way to separate her from her family, and only lent her, as I have said, for a brief space to her dying mother, who had not seen her for years, who had pined for the sight of her, and after many supplications had at last wrung from Mr. Lyndon the permission to see her for a few weeks before he carried her off for ever to England.” “Lyndon! Did you say Lyndon?” interrupted Mark, pale with unusual emotion. “Ves, that was his name. He really was a little mad. He had never told this girl that she was not his daughter, and would not allow her father and mother to reveal their relationship to her. They were, in her eyes, to pass as great friends of his. I remember how pathetic it was to watch the yearning glance with which Mrs, Hather- ley sometimes followed her unconscious daughter, who was very sweet and gentle, but perhaps a little cold; or, possibly, it was not coldness but only her affliction, which always seemed to make her the denizen of another sphere. Her adopted father lived only for her. And I remember her visit to her family was cut short by his jealousy. A young man—also a Hatherley—came out from England, and fell in love with Margaret. He was very indignant at old Lyndon’s preten- sions, and always said the girl should be enlightened. And he wanted to marry her, but the old man carried her away, and what happened afterwards I never heard.” Mark made no answer: his heart was too full of bitterness. Mr. Graham thought him absent-minded, and turned to Richard. An animated conversation between himself and the latter, in which Dr. Kenyon joined, began about Etruscan coins, theories as to Etruscan speech, and so on: subjects on which Dick was always interested, and interesting. Mark, meanwhile, sat quite mute, for the blow which he had just received was a terrible one. He knew now that all the wealth which his father had first employed, then squan- dered, and all that by which he himself, in countless advantages of education and up-bringing had benefited, had been obtained through a deception as elaborate as it was base; for even though Gomichbooks,. Go m