The Argosy — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

18 Winifred Power. ‘You are suddenly become very tender of your stepson’s feelings, madam,” snarled her husband. ‘Not so,” she answered. ‘‘I am only grateful to him for having restored to me my faith in human nature.” Then feeling how melodramatic this must sound to the cold, self- contained, reserved Mark, she quitted the room. Sir John sardonically observed that she was always in heroics. Mark made no reply, for his mind was full of facts which he had come to communicate to his father. That evening there was to be a dinner-party at The Limes. Not indeed one of the large banquets announced by Mrs. Burton—only twelve people in all. The guests were politely concerned on arriving to be told that Sir John was very unwell. Just as he had finished dressing for dinner he had been seized in the usual way, and was even now being treated with smelling salts and brandy in his bed-room. Nevertheless he was rallying ; and his friends were only entreated to have a little kind patience. So they waited, endeavouring with indifferent success to forget their hunger in looking at photographs, and entertained by Mrs. Hatherley, whose absent air was put down to anxiety, while Flossie had reddened eyelids. Presently Mark came in, very pale and a little stern; announcing, however, that his father was better. And then, five, minutes later, the folding-doors were flung back, and Sir John, wax-like, rather feeble, but picturesque, patient and benign, advanced slowly on the arm of his beautiful and haughty-looking young wife. He was full of courteous excuses ; of noble endurance, and waived away all enquiries with the stoic observation that the first thing now to be done was to dine. He exchanged Gertrude’s arm for that of a stout dowager, and remarked as he led her towards the dining-room that, like Charles II., he ought to apologise for being so long in dying, “Goodness, Sir John! but you are already better,” exclaimed the worthy dame. ‘Mine is a mere death-in-life. Pain is consuming me by inches.” The dowager felt embarrassed and, as she afterwards averred, for the first two courses and an entrée, ate no more thana bird. “In which case,” somebody remarked, “the bird she must have meant was a cormorant.” Sir John had never been more transcendental than on this occasion. He was apparently racked by pain, and made everybody uncomfortable who looked at him; he persisted in talking, and his utterances were formed with a fastidious and lofty morality; but he was not exactly amusing. Mark scarcely opened his lips, and Gertrude looked a trifle more bored than usual. Nevertheless the guests were satisfied, for they were right-royally fed. May, that terrible May of 1871, was drawing to its close ; and the alk inevitably turned on burning Paris. Much sympathy was ex- CORNICE LOOKS, CO