The Argosy — page 312: what you’re looking at

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

293 SABRINA. i N a July evening, when the last flush of rose-colour had passed away and left a still opaline clearness above the horizon, two friends sat on a rough seat beneath a group of lime trees. They were not lovers ; far from it ; yet Patience Fothergil and John Burton had been lovers in a dead and buried past, and the Patience, sitting there with silver threads in her hair and a few wrinkles about eyes and mouth, was no more lke the bright-haired, blossom-faced girl of twenty years ago, than was the anxious-looking, hard-featured solicitor, to the eager youth, in whose blue eyes hope had shone clear, as he faced the world, soul and body erect. His head was bowed thoughtfully enough now, and care had bent him towards the earth. I, Patience, had not blamed him in the after years ; nay, perhaps had learned to be glad of it; but I must confess that, at the time, it hurt me sorely when John told me that I was too strong- minded for him, that his ideal was now a soft, feminine woman, glad to lean meekly on her husband, and without thought beyond her home. ‘Then he quoted some dreadful lines from Milton. We had been quarrelling, and I said: ‘That will do, John ; our lives lie apart from this moment.” He was startled ; had not supposed me so ready to take him at his word; perhaps had thought to pare me down to his ideal, save the mark! But no entreaties could bring us together again; that speech of his had killed my love for him as effectually as if he had given me a blow. My cousin Margery is his wife now—soft and feminine, and unde- cided as Milton’s Eve, and as aggravating as that lady must have been when she reached middle age. I am sorry to say that her eight boys have much more of Cain than of Abel in their composition. Their father is much from home and their mother is weak ; therefore they are much more obnoxious than men in miniature generally are. I do not say it gladly, I only state a fact. When Margery came to me, six months after John and I had parted, and told me, blushing and smiling, that she was engaged to him, I congratulated her most sincerely. We had kept up a constant correspondence after their marriage and departure for Trinidad, where John had an appointment ; but we had never met again till this summer, when John had settled down near Shrubton, and bought a pretty house with nine or ten acres of ground, including the walled garden in which we were sitting, with no more romance in either of us than there was in the green peaches and apricots nailed to the south wall. GOMMGIOOKS (C(O) an