The Argosy — page 354: what you’re looking at

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

The Mystery of Allan Grale. 333 so much when you were here, you had better come again. If, as some people thought, though I never believed it, she had a tendresse for George Vivian, now is your time to take her heart at the rebound. He has gone and made the most ridiculous marriage, as perhaps you have heard—and is dying besides, poor silly fellow! A union with Mary Anne Grale will have its drawbacks, no doubt ; but she is rather a nice girl on the whole, and will improve wonderfully in a refined at- mosphere, and she’ll be immensely rich, so I don’t see that you can do better. Indeed, I think you will be lucky to get her.” Mrs. Grale, at this period, had a matter-of-fact trouble in the forth- coming departure of her favourite attendant, the parlour-maid, Susan, who was now on the verge of marriage with young Massey, the rail- way employé in London. | ‘Susan has been through a great deal with me,” said Mrs. Grale, ‘and it’s that which binds people together. I don’t know how often we’ve talked over that afternoon when Edgar Vivian left the note, and when Alny went away. I dare say we might both have been better employed. But anend comes to everything, and when it comes, it’s all for the best. So before Susan goes, [’ll have poor Alny’s room turned out and all his little matters put away. There’s no need to hold up all the old story before a new servant’s eyes. What people don’t see, they don’t think over—that’s my belief. When one’s son has died in a patched shirt and coarse stockings, there’s no good in making relics of his fine cambric and hand-knit.” So Alny’s drawers were emptied. His few books—some trashy novels, and one or two works on natural philosophy—were taken from the bracket and stored away in that cupboard of the old nursery, which had long contained the discarded toys of his childhood. Two or three photographs—one of George Vivian, one of a celebrated jockey, and another of a fashionable ‘‘ beauty,” were removed from the mantel- piece. Then Susan took up the little “calendar,” by which she had known and testified to the date of Edgar Vivian’s call at the house and subsequent events. ‘Td almost think the mistress would like to keep this,” mused Susan, who had the morbid tastes too common among her class. ‘‘T’d rather like it myself, seeing that it was the day I wrote my first love-letter.”’ Nobody, since then, had altered or touched this simple calendar. Susan proceeded to examine its mechanism, which was, however, a little more complicated than such things usually are. But she got the little case opened at last, and drew out that card, “Tuesday, the twentieth,” which had been fraught with such direful consequences. But as she looked at the card, which had come out with other cards, she uttered a cry and dropped the calendar. The girl’s ruddy face turned pale as death. For on this card there was printed something else, a word which she had not before seen, and the word was ‘‘ August!” ‘The terrified COMMICOOOKS. ECO