The Argosy — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

Lady Grace. 5 ‘ But she is, Edith. And your time is taken up with her, so that you cannot help me.” Miss Dane was silent. Had her time not been taken up, she fancied it might not be deemed quite the thing, in her censorious neighbourhood, to be going about in conjunction with Mr. Baum- garten ; although she was the late Rector’s daughter. The Reverend Cyrus Dane had been many years Rector of Little Whitton ; at his death, Mr. Baumgarten was appointed. Mrs. Dane was left with a very slender provision, derived from an annuity. Her husband had been quite unable to save money, the needs of his parish, the education of his two daughters, and the expenses of living had utterly absorbed his stipend, and kept him sadly poor. So poor that the necessary repairs of the rectory from year to year had never been attended to, and when he died it was in a woeful state of dilapi- dation. ‘The eldest of his daughters, Charlotte, had married George Brice, a nephew of Brice the surgeon ; he was the junior partner in a shipping house and lived in London. When Mr. Baumgarten arrived to take possession of his new living, he found the Rectory perfectly uninhabitable. Mrs. Dane had moved out of it to Whitton Cottage, and it was arranged that he should take up his residence with her, paying a certain sum for his board. It was a comfortable arrangement for the young clergyman, and it was a help to Mrs. Dane. He had not the means to put the Rectory into repair, and was told that he must go upon the late Rector’s widow to do it; that she was liable, as in fact she was. But Mr. Baumgarten could not and would not do that. She had not the means to restore it any more than he had. So things were left as they were, to drift, and he made himself happy and contented at Whitton Cottage. He had just entered now upon the second year of his residence with them; during which Mrs. Dane had been seized with a slow and lingering illness, which must in time terminate fatally. ‘Why did she love him? Curious fool, be still ; Is human love the growth of human will?” A great deal happier for many of us if it were the growth of human will, or under its control. In too many instances it is born of asso- ciation, of companionship ; and thus had it been at Whitton Cottage. Thrown together in daily intercourse, an attachment had sprung up between the young Rector and Edith Dane; a concealed attachment ; for he considered his circumstances barred his marriage, and she hid her feelings as a matter of course. He was an ambitious man, a proud man, though perhaps not quite conscious of it, and to encounter the expenses of a family household upon small means appeared to him more to be shunned than any adverse fate on earth. Mr. Baum- garten was of gentle birth, but he had not any private fortune or near relatives ; he had in fact no connections whatever to push him forward CoOnmnicboooks (CO