The Argosy — page 264: what you’re looking at

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

Beer «© AeR GG: O.SeY. APRIL, 1885. —EE _ — —— — — THE MYSTERY OF ALLAN GRALE. + + CHAPTER XIII. NOT ASKED TO BE WITNESSES. [* the day-time of Monday, the nineteenth of October, Mrs. Wilson, the worthy and angular and precise landlady of the lodging house in Great Grey Street, Chelsea, found herself in a very ruffled temper. And yet, what right had she to be angry? For several things had happened to her which bring pleasure to the natural feminine heart. She had just been one in a wedding party—that perennial human interest—she had on a handsome new dress—and she was relieved finally from a sense of responsibility and anxiety concerning Rose Raynham which had lurked within her for the last few weeks, despite her best endeavours to allay it. Yet still Mrs. Wilson felt herself an ill-used woman, and was thoroughly vexed ; and in a spirit of sophistry she was trying to find good reasons for being so, in the negligences of her servant and the patent thoughtlessness of some of her lodgers. But these subterfuges deceive nobody. ‘They did not deceive her. Mrs. Wilson judged her servant to be but a stupid girl; but the girl was shrewd enough to know ‘that 1t must have been something which happened at church which had put the missis out: she was pleasant enough before she went to the wedding, but she came back from it as cross as two sticks.” After that first visit which Mr. Forester had paid to Great Grey Street, the landlady had had terrible misgivings. For the gentleman did not return so promptly as he had promised, though he wrote to > her as well as to Miss Raynham, saying that he was detained by unexpected and pressing causes. ‘These letters were dated from the Iron Cross Hotel, though they bore a country postmark which was too indistinct for Mrs. Wilson to make out. Certainly he enclosed a VOL. XXXIX. | R CORNICE OOO GO)