The Argosy — page 369: what you’re looking at

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

345 EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A YOUNG LADY. PART II. EPTEMBER e2nd.—A year has passed since the last extract given. Papa and I are to dine at Lady Freeman’s to-night. It still seems strange that Amy is married, and that he and I live t€te-a- téte together, and together go to the few parties that ever occur in this neighbourhood. Strange, but pleasant. This dinner party has an unusual interest in it, as it is given in honour of poor Sir John Grant’s nephew, the present baronet, who has only quite lately come . home. Papa hopes he will prove a worthy successor to the good old man, and is anxious to meet him. Sept. 3rd.—Oh, what a wonderful evening was yesterday! We were all standing round the fire, at Lady Freeman’s, talking, when Sir Marcus Gray was announced ; and I think we all looked with some interest towards the door to see what the new baronet, who had come in the place of our old friend, was like. As he entered, my heart gave a great bound, and then stood still. It was not he at all; it was not Sir Marcus. It was my friend, the man who had told me not to forget him. A strange sensation crept over me, reminding me of that terrible night—I hated anything that reminded me of it—when for the first time in my life I fainted; but I was only faint now. I soon found I was recovering my senses, before I had lost them; and, while they were still in confusion, I found that Lady Freeman was shaking hands with the new comer and introducing him to papa and other people of any importance there as Sir Marcus Gray. And then I gradually took in the fact that Sir Marcus Gray was the man I had danced with at Westbeed, and in whose society I had spent that blissful summer day. I saw in a moment he was anxiously looking round the little group that stood by the fireside. Our eyes met. The blood rushed over his face. He was at my side in an instant, an eager hand stretched out to me, an unmistakable expression of joy in his face. His blue eyes shone with a strange fire in them. For the rest of that evening I felt as if I were in a dream. I looked, moved, and spoke in a dream; I never woke once. Of course Sir Marcus took Lady Freeman into dinner. Of course I fell to the share of some unimportant bachelor, and sat at a different part of the table. I eat and drank, and talked little commonplaces of the most common- place description, but it was all in a dream. I was just waiting. I knew what would happen when he was free; I knew he would come to me ; andso he did. Of course ; it would not have been him if he had not. Isat a little apart when the gentlemen entered the drawing-room after dinner; and some instinct told him where I was, for he walked CONNICMOOOKS. CcOnl