The Argosy — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

Lady Grace. 1 the mistake which had been made, adding she hardly knew whether it might be attributed to her son, to herself, or to both, and pleaded for Mr. Baumgarten’s forgiveness. ‘This note she despatched by her footman to Whitton Cottage. Mr. Baumgarten chanced to be standing in the house’s little hall as the man approached. He received the note from him. ‘Ts there any answer to take back, sir? My lady did not say.” “‘T will see,” replied Mr. Baumgarten. ‘Sit down, Robert.” Shutting himself into his study, he opened the note. For a few happy moments—if moments of suspense ever can be happy—he indulged in a vision that all might still be nght; that the note was to tell him so. It was short, filling only one side of the paper, and he stood while he read it. Before he had quite come to the end, before he had well gathered in its purport, a shock, singular in its effects, struck Mr. Baumgarten. Whether his breath stopped, or the circulation of his heart stopped, or the coursing of his pulses stopped, he could not have told ; but he sank down in a chair powerless, the letter falling on the table from his nerveless hand. A strange, beating movement stirred him in- wardly, his throat was gasping, his eyelids were fluttering, a sick faint- ness had seized upon him. But that he struggled against it with desperate resolution, he be- lieved he should have fainted. Once before he had felt something like this, when he was an undergraduate at Oxford, and he had been rowing against time to win a match. ‘They said then, those around him, that he had over-exercised his strength. But he had not been exercising his strength now, and he was far worse this time than he had been then. He sat perfectly still, his arms supported by the elbows of the chair, and recovered by degrees. After a bit, he took up Lady Avon’s note to read it more fully, and then he knew and realised that all, to which he had been so ardently looking forward, was at an end. The servant was seated in the little hall, quietly waiting, when Mr. Baumgarten came out of his study. ‘“‘ Her ladyship’s note does not require an answer, Robert,” he said with apparent coolness. ‘‘ How is she to-day ?” ** Middling, sir. She seemed much upset this morning, Charity told us, by a letter she got from his lordship in London,” added Robert. ‘Good day, sir.” Mr. Baumgarten nodded in answer. He stood at the door looking out, apparently watching the man away. The sun was shining in Ryle Baumgarten’s face, but the sun which had been latterly shining on his heart, illuminating it with colours of the brightest and sweetest phantasy—that sun seemed to have set for ever. (To be continued. ) VOL. XLIII. C GOMIGIOOKSHGO