The Argosy — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

The White. Wich. 3 Mr. Cattermole was out ; so Godfrey delivered the sketch-book to Nancy, who said it belonged to him, that he had missed it, and thought he must have left it in the churchyard. At dinner that evening, Mr. Mayne had most of the talk to himself. Mrs. Mayne, who was lying on the sofa in her dressing-room to rest her foot, had dinner sent up to her. Mary, looking pale and ill, sat as silent and depressed as during the first days of her stay at Croxham, and Godfrey was too much absorbed in her and in his own thoughts, to be very entertaining. When she left the dining-room, _ Mary stood hesitating which way she should turn. She looked towards the drawing-room, she looked towards the staircase; as she heard a footstep behind her she turned with a start which frightened poor Hawkins, solemnly advancing towards the hall table with candles, nearly out of his life. Then she began slowly walking upstairs ; but she was not half-way up when the dining-room door opened, and Godfrey overtook her. “Don’t go up,” said he, softly. ‘‘When you are ill and nervous, talking to your mother always makes you worse.” These words set her trembling as she glanced quickly up in his face. “And my father is going up to talk to her, and you will only be in the way. Come down into the drawing-room and take pity on me. You know _ what a bad hand I am at entertaining myself.” He laid his hand gently on her arm with a new authority which she did not understand, but which she was at the time too broken- spirited to resist. But in her heart she felt afraid of him; the dreamy vacancy had gone from his eyes, leaving them bright and thoughtful. He was no longer the listless Godfrey of every day, or _ the irritable Godfrey whose vehemence had sometimes surprised her. She let him lead her down again, passed Mr. Mayne on his way up to his wife, and into the drawing-room. There, by the exercise of tact so clever and careful that she quite failed to appreciate it, he soothed her and then teased her, waited upon and trifled about her, until she. laughed at him in her old half-arch, half-contemptuous fashion. For the first time since her fright at the farm-house she was her usual brilliant, saucy self. “How silly it was of me to have been frightened that other evening when watching for the monk!” she exclaimed. “Very, returned Godfrey, smiling. ‘‘I haye never understood what it was that did frighten you.” ‘‘ My nerves, I suppose ; or want of them. The best of us get frightened in the dark, Mr. Godfrey ; like naughty children.” ‘“*] think you want bracing. You would not have been frightened that evening, or to-day in the vestry, if you were in good health.” “Oh, well—perhaps it is so. I’ll get a tonic at the chemist’s when I next go into Cheston, and some delicious sweet-stuff to eat after it _and take the taste out of my mouth. But please do not say anything of this to mamma,” she went on, an uneasy tone superseding the Gomichboo <s) (E€@) m