The Argosy — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

Lady Grace. 13 she rushed about like one possessed, in her torrent of anger. As Congreve tells us, ‘‘ Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.” Then she sat down to her writing-desk and dashed off a blotted and hasty note to Lord Avon—which would just save the post. “Give the living to anyone you please, Harry, but not to Ryle Baumgarten : bestow it where you will, but not on him. There are reasons why he would be utterly unfit for it. Explanations when we meet.” During this, Mr. Baumgarten was hastening home, the great news surging in his brain. Edith was at the gate, not looking for him, of course; merely enjoying the air of the summer’s night. That’s what she said she was doing when he came up. He caught her by the waist, and drew her between the trees and the privet-hedge, and began to kiss her. She cried out, and gazed at him in wonder. ‘Edith, do you think I am mad? I believe I am—mad with joy ; for the time has come that I may ask you to be my wife.” ‘Your wife?” she stammered, for in truth that prospect had seemed farther off than heaven. He drew her to him again in the plenitude of his emotion. Her heart beat wildly against his, and he laid her face upon his breast, more fondly than he had laid another’s, not long before. “You know how I have loved you: you must have seen it, though I would not speak ; but I could not marry while my income was so small. It would not have been right, Edith.” “Tf you think so—no.” ** But, oh, my dearest, I may speak now. Will you be my wife?” ** But—what has happened ?” she asked. ‘Ah, what! Promotion has come to me, my dear one. I am presented to the living of Great Whitton.” * Of Great Whitton! Ryle!” “Tt is quite sure. Lord Avon’s mother asked him to give it to me, it seems, and he generously complied. Edith, will you reject me, now I have Great Whitton ? ” She hid her face; she felt him lovingly stroking her hair. ‘I would not have rejected you when you had but Little Whitton, Ryle.” “Yours is not the first fair face which has been there this night, Edith, he said in a laughing whisper. ‘“‘I had Lady Grace’s there but an hour ago.” A shiver seemed to dart through her heart. Her jealousy of Lady Grace had been almost as powerful as her love for Mr. Baumgarten. ‘Grace said, in a joking kind of way, that her mother had remarked I could marry now I had Great Whitton. So I told Grace that I should do so—one word leads to another, you know, Edith, and that I had only waited for preferment to marry you, my best love. As I was speaking, she managed somehow to twist her ankle. The pain must have been intense, for she turned as white as death, and COnnicboooks (CO)