The Argosy — page 187: what you’re looking at

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

170 Lady Valeria. moment’s consideration set out at once to place it in Lady Valeria’s hands and take the matter out of his own disposal. Seagrave Place is a once aristocratic and still eminently respectable region. A short street of handsome, dull, old-fashioned houses, that seemed very silent and lonely when Eustace entered it about eight o’clock that evening. Number rr had been the town house of the Meynells from father to son for three generations, and Lady Valeria still clung to it. She had, as in duty bound, indeed, offered it to her son, Oliver, on his marriage; but he, with filial devotion, refused to disturb her; perhaps moved by Mrs. Oliver’s declaration that she, personally, would prefer second-floor lodgings in Pimlico—so oppres- sive was the majestic gloom that enveloped the locality. Eustace—approaching on the opposite side of the road—stopped to gaze meditatively at the lighted windows of the house. They suddenly grew dim as he watched them—rather to his surprise—till he noticed the bright streaks at the edges of the thick blinds of the lower windows, and guessed that the inmates had gone down stairs to dinner. The windows above still glowed with fire-light, and in one shone a reading-lamp, casting a queer elongated figure of the tall chair-back near it on the white linen blind. Another shadow and a moving one became confused with it for a moment. Presently a woman’s head and shoulders were flung in grotesque distortion across the white field of the blind, and then the blind itself was slightly pushed aside. Someone gazed out on the streets below, and then disappeared, giving place to the tall chair-back again. It was but a trifle; the action of some housemaid on the lookout for her friend the policeman ; and yet it sent a rush of unaccountable curiosity and misgiving through the watcher’s mind, and made him stay his steps a space. | The street-door of No. 11 opened suddenly, but very softly, just as he at last crossed the road. A woman slipped out and drew it behind her with noiseless care, but before she could descend the steps Eustace, with rapid decision, made an impetuous rush, and coming perilously near collision caused her to start back. “T beg your pardon. Js this Dr. Diarmid’s?” he asked, using a name he had read on a brass plate three doors off. “Not here. I do not know him,” was the sharp reply, and the speaker hurried past him and was off and away down the street into the darkness before he could say another word. ‘Never mind, I shall know your black eyes and white face again if need be, I think, my good woman, better than you will know me,” was his reflection as he turned round and rang the bell on his own account. Lady Valeria Meynell, the grave domestic assured him, was seriously unwell, too unwell to receive anyone. He was evidently a person of discrimination, accustomed to deal with his mistress’s clerical callers. Mr. Meynell would see anyone on business for her ladyship any day by appointment. Mr. Meynell was there that evening. ECORMMICMOOOKS.E@ nn |