The Argosy — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

The White Witch. Q7 from strong emotion. Her poor face lay white and still, her arms and hands were at rest. Godfrey was beside her in a moment, kneeling, calling out for anybody whose name came first; and it was not until he had transferred her head softly from his own knee to Lydia’s, and seen Mrs. Garner hurrying from the housekeeper’s room, and Mary assisted to her own, that he took advantage of his liberty to follow Ernest. “TI did not promise her not to speak to him,” Godfrey told himself, which perhaps savoured of sophistry; “‘and it is for her safety that I must do it.” “Mr. Ernest is gone to London, sir,” was the answer that met him at the Grange. ‘‘ He started in the dog-cart to catch the train not five minutes ago.” Godfrey felt a weight of black anxiety suddenly lifted from his shoulders. This abrupt departure .could only mean one thing: Ernest must have been told enough of Mary’s danger to be preparing at once some safe shelter for her until he could make her his wife. It did not occur to Godfrey to ask the servant any particulars, or he might possibly have doubted his own conclusion. He saw no more of Mary that night. The schoolroom window and the greenhouse had been mended in the day, but Godfrey felt pretty sure that Mr. Cattermole’s feet were not yet in a condition for another midnight invasion; neither, perhaps, was another necessary. However, he patrolled the house once or twice during the night, and on one occasion met his father doing the same and pointing an old flint-lock pistol at a statue on the stair- case, in alarm at his son’s footsteps. And after having been seized and pounded by Mrs. Garner, who was taking a reconnaissance in undress, Godfrey retired, satisfied that any intruder would have a warm time of it. He puzzled himself about Mary’s unwillingness for him to speak to Ernest, which had led her to play him a trick, the result of which she herself could not measure. In that one moment, when she had drawn his hand into hers and called him by his name, it had stirred his very soul; for there was a look in her face and a soft witchery in her tone which seemed to say she loved him. He asked her the next morning at breakfast what it was that was taking Ermest to town in such a hurry. She answered that he had been neglecting his work lately, and she had recommended him to make up for lost time. “You know,” added Mary, “he has annoyed his father lately by being so idle and by running into debt; so that our engagement has to be a secret until he has worked himself into favour again.” Godfrey was not satisfied. Colonel Underwood was never annoyed at anything his son did; and Ernest might ride, or drive, or dress himself into favour, but he would certainly never work _ himself into anything. He was always running backwards and for- VOL, XXXVIII H EONNICE OOKS EOLA