The Argosy — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

52 Christobel. people and receiving none. ‘The Hillyers, for generations a proud race, had never recovered from the blow. Misfortune had dogged them ever since, they said bitterly. Sorrow made them prouder and more resentful, but not more energetic. They did not seek for remedies from within, but from without; vaguely expecting strokes of good fortune, and being disappointed when these failed them. Geraldine had grown up, feeling year after year more strongly the incongruity between the family means and the family pretensions ; harassed constantly by the need of economy and the impossibility of achieving it; patiently attaining to results, only to see them destroyed by some caprice or some folly of her father’s. She had persuaded him, as long as her own education was not completed, to see but little company; and had thus put an end to the lavish hospitality which had become a proverb in the county. But while Geraldine economized at home, Mr. Hillyer squandered abroad ; and his daughter came at last to realise how vain were all her sacrifices. Upon this sad, pathetic youth of hers the possibility of Godfrey ‘Verschoyle’s love had fallen like a sunbeam. To her, the proud and serious and silent young girl, bearing the burdens and expiating the follies of others, it had never seemed possible that anybody should love her for herself alone. Pretty and graceful as she was, she held her own grace and beauty in small account beside those of other girls ; and she was very far indeed—sweet soul! —from guessing that for anyone endowed with true insight, she possessed one all-compelling charm in her simple, ever ready kindness. Captain Verschoyle seemed just a young Englishman of a type common enough—manly, upright, goodly to look upon; and intelli- gent above the average, if gifted with no special genius. He was so far superior to his fellows, that he had seemed on his first acquaint- ance with her to recognise the mingled sweetness and hidden strength of Geraldine Hillyer’s character. Hers was a nature which, starved of love hitherto, needed it in order to expand; and the reverent, subdued tenderness with which Godfrey treated her had seemed like the realisation of a joyful dream. A hundred times he had apparently been on the brink of declaring himself; but some- thing — one or other of the numberless invisible currents which determine human action, sometimes to its marring—had intervened ; and Geraldine, half unconscious of what she hoped, had been kept in an agitated uncertainty. A few words must be expended on the reason of the present unusual gathering at the Hall. The party had been assembled to do Nonour to Mr. Sherlock, an uncle of Mr. Hillyer’s, who had lately returned to his own country after years spent in Australia. This old man (he was over eighty) had had the good luck to make a large fortune in the Colonies; but there his luck ceased. COnnNICLOOOKS m