The Argosy — page 192: what you’re looking at

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

The White Witch. 177 ‘‘T was telling Mary about it in the drawing-room before dinner. She made me promise not to say anything to you. She thought, like the good-natured girl she is, that it would make you uncomfortable to be told you looked like an eavesdropper: and that was what you looked like, I assure you.” “Oh, I was—I was looking for the old nails,” said Godfrey, staring aimlessly in front of him, and not conscious that his answer was ridiculous. “Well, Godfrey, you will never make a gardener; and really and truly I begin to think you will never make anything. Anything that’s good.” “Thank you, father,” laughed Godfrey, as he left the library. The idea he had caught up was true, then. She had discovered that he was outside during that conversation, and had set herself to befool him ! He went out of doors. He strode quickly across to the plantation, leaned his back against a tree and gazed up at the school-room windows, where there was a light. She was still up, then, with all her fatigue; not yet in her bed- room. What was she doing? Writing a diary, as adventuresses are supposed to do, and setting down how brilliantly she had outwitted him? Or was she only laughing at her triumph over the ‘“ ill-man- nered bear,” and the ease with which she had taken him inP His indignation against her was great; he felt that he would like to climb the wall between the Abbey garden and the farmyard, mount to the top of the greenhouse, get on to the sill of the nearest of the two school-room windows, both of which were open, and raising the blind, peer in suddenly upon her and confound her in the midst of her enjoyment. She was so delicate, was she? A shock, a little extra excitement, might kill her, might it? By Jove, he should half like to try! The thought that he had been beguiled by her that evening into a spasm of the tenderest pity, stronger than any feeling he remembered to have known, just by a softly-whispered lie and a sweet glance out of her bewitching eyes, was maddening to his self-esteem ; and the fact of her having done so much and so quickly with him, who rather flattered himself that he was a shrewd judge of women, no doubt helped to make him take a very highly-coloured view of her wicked fascination. That it was wicked he did not question, since it was put on with one view—that of misleading him. But her mother! What share had that gentle, kind-hearted lady had in her daughter’s faults or sins? A passive one, or none at all, he felt sure. She was unselfish, capable of devotion ; and the duty of a parent to children was one of her guiding principles. The girl had drifted into some undesirable if not dangerous current, and the mother must shield her at any risk. It suddenly flashed upon Godfrey that this was the explanation of his stepmother’s morbid anxiety EONNIE OOO KS (E() m