The Argosy — page 376: what you’re looking at

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

Extracts from the Diary of a Young Lady. 355 When in the drawing-room, his blue eyes (alas, alas!) scanned me with deepest love, changing to anxiety. “ Dearest,” he cried, ‘‘ how ill you have been—far, far more than { dreamed of. Why, this is not my Lucy.” “Jt is your wefe,” I said softly, with an emphasis that I only under- stood on the little word ; then I added: ‘‘ Yes, I have been very ill— and it has been a strange illness—it seems to have changed me, as you say. Iam zot what I was.” “Lucy,” he cried, again embracing me, “as you recover your strength, your gaiety will return—your hopes have been disappointed —your tender heart wounded, and I not able to console—not near you.” Then he went to dress for dinner, and after that we dined together, and together we even left the dining-room for the little boudoir in which we spent our evenings. How sweet, how dear, how home-like it all was. Yet was it not only a burlesque, such as demon fingers might draw, of the life that had deen? If it were a sin to harbour the criminal, verily my sin had found me out. Just then my husband, who I supposed had been telling me something amusing, gave a cheery laugh. The laugh startled me. I looked at him, and for an instant the scene around me faded away as I beheld, as if with my physical eyes, that man laughing there, my husband, murdering another. [I rose from my chair with a cry of pain. “‘ My dearest,” he said, taking me in his arms, ‘“‘you are still ill. What has Doctor Winsley been about? Why was I not sent for? You should be in your bed—you should, indeed.” He caught me in his kind arms and carried me, more than supported me, up stairs to my room. What could I do in that loving embrace but nestle my head on his breast, and there, my face hid, weep out my anguish? I felt in that moment as if I could have told him all, and that, with no secret between, we could bravely, though sorrowfully, live hand-in-hand our life of penitence and duty, and that, so lived, it might not be so intolerable. There would even have Deen a sweetness in telling him that I still loved him, loved him still, through all, notwithstanding all. But I could not do it. I felt that to him such a life might be the one thing that could not be borne. | So no word was spoken and I was left alone. Alone to weep and to pray ; and my very soul seemed to lose itself in tears and in prayers before I sought my bed. I feigned sleep when my husband came, and I lay sleepless the whole night, though I wondered greatly at the calm slumber which he enjoyed. Habit is above all things. ‘There is something humiliating in the discovery of how soon the mind becomes accustomed to anything. Ecstatic joy or mortal anguish are accepted after the first, and cease to annoy. How many of us have said, ‘That I could not bear; ” and have been plunged into that very unbearable grief, and learned to COMICLDOO SS (C©) im