The Argosy — page 359: what you’re looking at

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

338 Lady Valeria. The hansom stopped. ‘‘Good-bye, Mr. Paramount. You must let me say that I don’t see why your son shouldn’t make his way up and be a credit to you.” ‘The old gentleman cut the subject short with an angry head-shake. “And I’m awfully sorry that you’ve other troubles as well; but—but,” seeking for a consolatory word, ‘“‘T daresay there are many worse places than St. Fridolin’s, if you’d only look about you.” Mr. Paramount lifted his hat and turned sharply away, but as the swing door of The Blue Dog closed behind him, a meditative ex- pression crossed his features, and he shook his head doubtfully. As to Edric, he drove as fast as wheels could take him to the Archdales’, only to find Sir John, Lady Archdale, and Hester, all out; and then to Mrs. Damien’s, where he found a crowd of visitors, his hostess languid, absent, and absorbed in the discussion of the approaching journey: whilst Lady Monchalsea, triumphant and dicta- torial, sang alternately the praises of Professor Montrose and the Honourable Ted Boughton. He had done a bad day’s work, he decided moodily that evening as he returned to Shorncliffe. He would have been still more con- vinced of it had he guessed the unwonted stir and agitation his visit had left behind him in Lavender Row. It would more have provoked than gratified him to know the audacious little fancies that set Elsie singing over her work, even while she could have beaten herself for sheer vexation at the remembrance of her own childish shyness in his presence. Elsie never cared to sit dreaming now. Life came too near and was too feverishly interesting. Was she not beginning to act a timid little part of her own in the great world-drama, instead of sitting a far-off, silent spectator? Hester’s visit, following close on Edric’s, excited her unaccountably. She unconsciously divined Hester’s disapproval, and as unconsciously defied it. She tossed her head, and sang again over her lengths of cloth and lining. The machine began to run rather crookedly presently, and then came to a stop. She threw her work aside impatiently, and walked out into the passage, where she was fain to rest for a moment before creeping step by step up the staircase, mounting it for the second time only since the fall which had lamed her when a child. Her face flushed, and she bit her lip and winced once or twice before she gained the door which Roswal had attacked so savagely ; but she reached it at last, and, turning the handle, peeped timidly in. The room was long and low pitched, and the great window-shutter was closed to keep out some of the sunshine that even there made itself felt. ‘There was a curtain screening a bed ina recess; a tall press with brass mountings ; an iron cooking stove in the fireplace, a couch, and a long lounging chair in which Mrs. Beltran was lying, looking idly at the glints of light on the beams and rafters above her, and doing nothing else. CORNICLOOKS (C©) im