The Argosy — page 204: what you’re looking at

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

Lady Valena. 187 character. But I think in this last case I have some reason, though I can’t tell what it is. Perhaps it’s only instinct, but it seems to make me mistrustful and uneasy. I wish Elsie were not coming. That girl is my evil genius; I felt it from the first.” She can’t do you much harm in half-an-hour. Aunt Mamie is ta take care of her till Sampson’s performance comes off, and she will leave directly after, so I hope the danger from her society is reduced to a minimum.” ‘‘T wish she would stay away,” Hester repeated, obstinately ; “‘but let her rest now. Who else did you say ?” ‘“¢ My prima donna, Fraulein von Kreifeldt, and Mr. Poynter.” “Ah!” with a hypocritical sigh of sham apprehension, “ don’t I know what that portends. He'll be sent in to dinner with me, of course, and my life will be one long struggle to save you all from being swamped in shop, unless you can put him and Daddy out of conversation range.” ‘What affectation! As if you didn’t revel in shop yourself and weren’t a perfect regimental record. Don’t despair; he mayn’t think the entertainment worth the journey from Shorncliffe, and we shall get an apologetic note to-morrow to say he has missed his train or been sent on detachment duty somewhere.” Neither fate had, however, befallen Edric. No more had been heard of the orders for Portsmouth, and he was at that moment speeding comfortably townwards, trying to calculate whether he should be too early or too late in arriving at St. Maur Road. He contrived to be punctual to the hour named, and followed the broad back of an over-coat which he seemed dimly to recognise up the steps. The over-coat proved to contain Sir John Archdale, who greeted Edric in.a most fatherly fashion and introduced him over again to “my little girl Hester,” whom they found the sole occupant of the drawing-room. Miss Hester was in a white gown with a yellow sash and knots of golden pansies about it. “What a bright little creature,” was Edric’s thought as her laughing glance met his, and her shapely little brown hand was extended as her father said ‘‘ One of ‘Qurs,’ Hetty.” But that was all he thought—for—enter his goddess on a rosy cloud—otherwise Mrs. Damien in a Worth gown—and poor Hester passed into neutral tinted shadow. | The next arrivals were a tall, distinguished-looking man, with a picturesque beard and untidy garments, accompanied by a pretty wife with expressive eyes and the tints of a Greuze. “ Connections of Mrs. Damien’s. Lady Beatrix was a Boughton, a daughter of the Countess of Monchalsea,” Miss Archdale explained to him, with open eyes of astonishment at his ignorance. ‘ Not know Lepell, the artist and art-critic, who writes such exquisite vers de société and is the All England tennis champion ?” ECoOnniclboooks (CO) im