The Argosy — page 340: what you’re looking at

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

Mr. Fermyn’s Racquet. 321 She let herself out through the same glass door at which she had stood looking into the garden yesterday. She went rapidly along a gravel path, over a plot of dripping grass, and now here was the shrubbery. She had on thin shoes, but she plunged in amongst the soft earth, and fought her way through the laurels and bays and hollies —until at last she stood beneath her own window. Yes, it was just as she thought. Alas! there lay the racquet. She took it up, tears of vexation glistening in her eyes. Ah, it was quite spoilt ; of course she might have expected that. ‘The netting loosened, the head twisted, the plaiting on the handle hanging in long strips. Hopelessly, irredeemably spoilt. She turned it over and over, heedless of the damp mould encasing her feet. The very wood had worn into a hole underneath where the plaiting had been. Alas for poor Mr. Jermyn’s racquet ! Stay—this was not a hole. No, no. What was this? A little round bit of tin about the size of a half-crown. She stared at it, and pushed it down at one side, and found that it turned back as if upon a hinge. The next instant her face had grown whiter than the white house beside which she was standing. Zhe locket that she had given him, the locket with her own miniature, was lying before her eyes / She took out the locket from its bed, and stared before her blankly. In one moment she understood—she saw it all. The only thing was, how had she been so blind as not to see it from the first. The man, in whose rooms she had discovered the locket and the racquet that fatal afternoon, was well known amongst them as being a mechanical genius. He was always making things, and contriving things, and inventing things. Of course she knew that; how had she not thought of it? He was to have been Douglas Jermyn’s best man ; of course Douglas had entrusted him with the locket that he might do this with it. And very likely, most possibly, the racquet and locket had been thrust hastily aside where she had seen them, at the announcement of her entry. It was an odd, fanciful idea of Mr. Jermyn’s—of Douglas’s. She could not help smiling at it in the midst of her distress—but then Douglas had always been so fanciful. She pushed her way slowly and dazedly out of the bushes again, the locket still in her hand. She went in at the same door, along past the wraps. ‘They were still there, but to-night she never even noticed them, and at the foot of the stairs paused, and drew a deep breath of positive horror. Oh, were things always to turn against her! What fate, or chance, had ordered that Mr. Jermyn should be coming down those stairs ? Whatever it had been, he was coming down them. In point of fact he had gone up by this quiet way for a pipe he had left in the smoking- room. He was in evening dress, but looked in no wise surprised to see the beautiful Miss Raymond, dishevelled and dripping, coming in at this -hour from the garden. He drew aside politely to let her pass—just underneath the rose-coloured lamp. Whether it was the GonmilGaooks (SO) mn