The Argosy — page 191: what you’re looking at

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

174 Lady Valeria. “Only a fine lady’s freak!” he persisted. Came December with its slush and snow. Still the graceful fur-clad figure crossed his path, gay and bright and confident of his sympathy, let his greeting be never so ungenial. A society paper found its way occasionally to the dull old Georgian mansion, and with much self-contempt he caught himself stopping when he came to a paragraph in which her name might chance to be mentioned. By that he discovered that she was a personage of note in her way; one of last season’s beauties who had been painted by an R.A. and been admired by a Royal Highness. <A Baltimore beauty of good English birth, and connected by marriage with more than one noble family. The editor indeed was kind enough to speak of her late husband as ‘‘ poor dear Noel Damien,” in quite brotherly fashion, and allude to his love affairs and money difficulties in a style that must have been highly consoling to his widow. Stories of her sayings and doings, of her charm, her kindliness, her energy, her patience under rebuffs and disappointments—and alas !-— of her extravagance, capriciousness, love of excitement, reached him through de Cressy : who, he noticed with grim amusement, had fallen desperately in love with her in his own little odd way—under protest as it were—with a full sense of the uselessness and absurdity of the proceeding. ‘A fine lady’s freak !” said the Vicar to himself for the last time. The New Year had begun, and a day of premature Spring sunshine was lighting up the land. He stood in the churchyard watching the . progress of his Parish Room. ‘The indefinable stir and promise of spring was in the air. The chirpings of the astonished sparrows mingled with the music of the masons’ tinkling trowels ; and, as the year’s first streak of sunshine glanced athwart the smoky slates, Mrs. Damien, with de Cressy beside her, sauntered up to him. ‘“ How fast it grows!” Mrs. Damien was saying, looking at the red brick box before her. ‘‘ We ought to grow a pear tree up the south side. Or is that too secular? Something ecclesiastic. Would a vine and a fig tree be more correct ?” “We!” Eustace winced with an odd, exasperated, amused, not altogether unpleasant feeling. Before he could analyse it she went on. “When it is finished I wonder if you would let me have it for an evening every week: to gather my girls in.” ‘Your girls: what girls have you found in St. Fridolin’s?” he asked, rather puzzled. ‘All there are,” she answered, carelessly. ‘‘ Out-door workers in the big shops, telephonists, book-binders; I don’t know how I came to find them all.” She stopped with a certain chilled air of disap- pointment. She had detected his wandering attention ; even a slight frown of impatience. How could she tell that it was impatience with himself for thinking not of her words but of the pretty musical inflections of her sweet voice, of’ the marvellous gifts of witchery ECORMMICMOOOKS EO) m