The Argosy — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

The White Witch. 93 of the girls they had met there; Godfrey disparaged it. They looked both beautiful and good, she said. Upon which, Godfrey made a remark that displeased his father. ‘Godfrey, remember what you are saying. You are talking as if beauty were more important than goodness !” ‘Well, is it not so?” returned he, glancing at his step-mother. * But as you are both beautiful and good, Mrs. Mayne, the matter cannot affect you, whichever way we settle it. I suppose you are both privately thinking of my choosing one of these young ladies. Of course I must put her beauty foremost. If I were a poor clerk, or a linendraper’s assistant, it would be different; I would then fix my well-regulated affections on the plain but thrifty eldest daughter of ten, as the most important thing would be that my wife should be a thrifty housekeeper. As it is, the chief point is that she should please me; I can afford to dispense with the moral and useful virtues, on condition that she makes it up in charm.” His father took this speech as an unkind joke at his step-mother’s expense. ‘‘ Godfrey is only laughing at you,” said he. * Laughing, am J,” murmured Godfrey, but without excitement, as he withdrew. “It will be no laughing matter if Madame ma belle-mére disposes of me against my will.” He fell to thinking of Elspeth, the simple little companion he had taken care of that day, with pleasure though without enthusiasm. He had enjoyed the bright happiness in Elspeth’s fair face at first, he had been touched by her simple-minded distress later. But her naive coquetry had no piquancy, her ill-humour even less, and her liking for himself was not strong enough to prove by itself an attraction. Whether Matilda herself had come off so safely is open to question. To judge by the tears she shed in her room that night one might have thought her peace of mind was gone for ever. But whether all this emotion was because the day’s pleasure was over, and to- morrow the dull routine of practising and wrangling with one’s sisters must go on again, or because the Vicar had said that the girls must not go out again with the Abbey people, it would have been hard to decide. The story of the day’s adventures had now been told; it angered Mr. Thornhill; it angered his wife and upset her calculations. For when she had allowed herself to dream the desirable dream of having a daughter safely settled as prospective mistress of the Abbey, it was Matilda, not Elspeth. Matilda, with her energetic temper and sarcastic tongue, would be the very wife to rule the Abbey’s indolent heir. And now, with that blind in- difference to the fitness of things and their own best interests which young men always showed, he appeared to be turning his thoughts to Elspeth. Mrs. Thornhill, with a mother’s marrying eye, had observed certain signs in this young man’s conduct which led her to doubt whether CONNIE IOOKS (E(©) m