The Argosy — page 373: what you’re looking at

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

352 Extracts from the Diary of a Young Lady. course that he must have faults, though I had not yet found them out. I may, if I choose, take it as a matter of course still, but I have not yet discovered them. April 25th.—I will try and write down calmly the dreadful events of the past weeks. I feel that it may be a sort of relief to do so, if the word relief can ever be used by me again. He was gone, and I wandered about the house so sad and yet so infinitely happy. Oh, did such happiness really exist as mine then ? I must not write of it or think of it, or I shall die. He had given me his keys in case I wanted anything, but as he did so he reserved one key from the bunch. I found afterwards he had made a mistake and kept back the wrong key, leaving me the one of the drawer I ought never to have opened. ‘Two days after he was gone came a telegram to me; he had left some things behind that he wanted ; and so I went to his dressing-room to find them for him. Among other drawers I unlocked one in his table, a drawer he always kept locked. I did not see in it what I was looking for, but my eye fell on something else. A book—a Bible. I knew I had seen it before. The dark blue morocco binding, with the gold edge a little shabby, struck me with a strange familiarity. Idly I opened it, and read in round childish hand my own name. ‘Lucy Lee, from her dear papa on her tenth birthday.” What did it mean? How did that book get here? Stay, what is this written underneath it, and written, how wonderful! in my husband’s hand: ‘*Given by her to me, Marcus Gray, on the night of the ‘2nd of June, r8—. From this night I go and sin no more.” And there is more still, in different, fresher ink, but the same writing, just below the first sentence : —_ “Nov. 1st, r8—, Married to-day to the beautiful child who gave me this book on that memorable 2nd of June, three years ago. She saved me then and I have lived worthy of her since. ‘To do so and to win her love, has been the one object of my life. God grant that I never give her cause to repent it.” What did it mean ? For minutes, perhaps for hours—I do not know—I stood as one stunned, the book in my hand, my eyes staring at the words, though unable to read them again. Then, through my brain like lightning, the meaning flashed ; flashed never to be forgotten while memory remained ; flashed with a physical agony such as lightning might perhaps inflict. He—my husband—was that sailor lad whom I had hidden in my room and to whom I had given that Bible. He —my husband—was a murderer; the murderer of Sir John Gray ; of his own uncle. Everything confirmed this horrible impossibility ;. dreadful thoughts rushed and tumbled one over another into my mind, all making the impossibilities possible. I knew he had not been on good terms with his uncle, and that something had happened that made it painful to him to hear his name. In fact we never CONMICMOOOKS. © = a i. 2 |