The Argosy — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

186 Lady Valeria. loosely on her thin fingers, and this one all but fell once. Shelooked at it, too, with a meaning air, and seemed about to call my attention to it, but checked herself. Yes, I could almost swear to it.” ‘ How did he get it ?” ‘‘ How did he come by that letter? I have asked you that before. There is, I think, no question of your mother having written it, but not for him—that I cannot believe.” “For whom, then ?” eagerly. “There you must help me. May she not have written it under a delusion, for some purely imaginary son? ‘That agent had buoyed her up with hopes of meeting him again. If we could but lay hands on her!” Meynell shook his head sadly. ‘“No, that won’t do. I know she was not herself many atime. I know from what my father told me there were peculiarities about her mania; strong delusions on some points, while on all others she was perfectly rational. But I cannot believe she would go so far as to write this with nothing definite to go upon. No, he has persuaded her into recognising him, poor soul!” ‘Impossible !” Lady Valeria’s wild words still ran in the Vicar’s head. ‘‘ Young—quite young ; tall and fair like his father, with kind, bright eyes—blue eyes!” Impossible for dark, gipsy-faced Magrath to have passed for one moment as the one she was seeking. ‘“ I should like to have seen that miniature,” he said, regretfully. “It was faded almost out of recognition but could never have been like him. ‘There was an inscription on the back with the names in full and the date,” Meynell replied. “He stole it! he forged it. The cipher on the watch was too sharply cut to have been in wearing as long as the rest of the case. If I could have only had a watchmaker’s opinion on the state of the works. Meynell, you cannot let this go on. It is impossible to see this imposture flourishing before our eyes and not strike it down. It must be done; if only for the sake of your mother’s memory. No wrong, of which she was the innocent victim, can be so great as that a vulgar adventurer like this should be permitted to make her his tool now that she is dead.” He had started up, and made a few hurried steps to and fro in the room. Meynell started up ‘too, and stood beside him, upright and determined, his eyes alight. You are right! It shall zot go on. If I had had the courage to trust you wholly from the first I might not have given way as I have done. It was the shock, so terrible and unexpected, confirming what I had been gathering with dread from my dead father and Lord Kilmoyne’s letters. I had been shutting my eyes to the truth as long as I dared, and it seemed to start up in this man’s person and strike me powerless. Let us only keep it all from Mabel. Brant is perhaps not so thoughtful of her as he might be, and if he fancied there was madness in her family si CONMICLMOOOKS. ©