The Argosy — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

22 The White Witch. to lead a disorderly life; I have never had yet. But I could set to work with more heart if I had still the prospect that it would not long be a lonely one.” ‘Elspeth is not the only girl in the world,” suggested the Vicar. ‘The only other I should have cared to marry is engaged,” replied Godfrey steadily. ‘Took here, Godfrey,” said the Vicar after a short pause: ‘‘ You have been frank in this matter, and I don't wish to be hard or unjust to you. You say you are going away. Now we are all going to the lakes for a month. Suppose we allow the matter to rest in abeyance : there shall be no formal breaking-off of the engagement, but let the correspondence drop for that time. I will settle it with Elspeth. If you leave Croxham before the end of next week—that must be a strict condition—I shall understand that you are in earnest about wishing to keep on the engagement. And if, when we return at the end of the month, you write and satisfy me that you are anxious to keep your faith loyally to her, the engagement shall go on as before. If you cannot satisfy me or yourself of that, why, my little daughter will have to shed a few tears that a more constant wooer would have spared her, and the matter will be at an end. You had better come over as usual to-morrow; but I think I must ask you not to make a long téte-a-téte with Elspeth, and to let me break this matter to her as seems best to me.” They both rose, and Godfrey left the Vicarage a good deal impressed by the Vicar’s justice and unexpected leniency. He walked through the avenue on his way back to the Abbey in a state of more sobriety of mind than he had been in for weeks, ‘That acquiescence of his in the decision both of Mr. Thornhill and Mary herself, that his love for the latter was a wicked infatuation, made it treacherously easy for him to look upon it, after the refrigerating society of the Vicar and his wife, as a folly to be easily crushed—if that blow of her engage- ment to Ernest had not yet quite killed it. Then arose the thought of her danger. That the bringirg down of this detective from Scotland Yard by Sir William Hunt, did some how menace Mary with danger, Godfrey felt all too sure of—though he was unable to foresee precisely in what manner, or what shape it would take. Well, if he could not be at hand to watch over her him- self, he must hand over that care to her future husband. But he had more than a week to stay at home yet—and who knew what might come to pass in that time? The disagreeable suspicion, spoken of as having arisen in Godfrey’ S mind during the interview he had been a witness to between Sir William and the detective officer, was this : that the latter was no other than the artist-lodger at the farm—Mr. Cattermole. The suspicion was more than disagreeable; it was bidedusd Had this man, an acute adept in all the tricks and turns of the criminal law, placed himself in that close contiguity to the Abbey, passing Gomicbooks.co m ———— ——e