The Argosy — page 273: what you’re looking at

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

oe 9: ~~ The White Witch. “Ts itso?” cried he, impulsively. “Indeed it is. I meant to ask you to be so kind as to keep my unlucky accomplishment a secret; for if it is once known that I can sing, of course I shall have to sing: and I cannot and must not. In return, I promise you I will sometimes sing to you again.” “Thank you,” said he, warmly. ‘I never experienced so enthralling a pleasure in my life. I should never have thought a % young lady could sing like that without years of special study and i practice.” G “Of course not. I have had the special study and the practice. I was trained for public singing, but my health gave way before I could appear.” | Godfrey did not understand the tumult her words woke in him. He felt sympathy with her disappointment, pity for her delicacy ; but he felt, too, a passionate impulse of gladness that was not so easy to account for. Why should it give him this acute pleasure p—what could it matter to him whether she had sung in public or not? Her thoughts appeared to have wandered away; she looked out into the night-mist over the garden and the meadow with a stern, set expres- sion that he could not read. a ue ‘You have studied in Italy, I suppose. In Rome?” he asked at ii 9 random, anxious to make her speak again and look at him. | Le | But her face changed to sudden terror as she started and faced | him again, and he knew that he had struck some painful chord. Clever though Miss Dixon was, she was too young to be a perfect mistress of the arts of concealment, and she let it be seen that a ran- dom shaft, like this, had struck home. She recovered herself at once. “You quite startled me. I was thinking of—of the time when they used to tell me that my voice would move Europe. They tell all young singers that, I believe,” she added, drily. But Godfrey had received hischeck. Was she deceiving him again? | The thought made him furious. He wanted to get the truth out of her, by persuasion, by soft words and tones, by satire; anyhow. But all he could do was to stand there and pull his moustache, which the ladies of the neighbourhood called golden, and his father, sandy. Mary rose and went to the table, where the lamp was, and looked on at the draughts. Godfrey left the room and shut himself into the refectory in the worst of humours. At first he couldn’t find his cigar- case, then he had mislaid his cigar-lights, and when he had found them none of them would light. He stood there box in hand, scrap- am | ing with one match after another, muttering as the head blew off the eh first: ** Hang it!” off the second: ‘‘ Confound it!” and as the third match broke in his angry fingers: ‘‘ Curse her!” That calmed him. Godfrey hardly ever swore, and the strong 1 expression which had involuntarily escaped him woke him to the con- , sciousness that he was making a fool of himself. He quietly lit his. cigar and stretched himself in the American chair to moralise, 5 oF - _- “% — 1*..7 ~ = comicbooks.cor