The Argosy — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

Fatthful unto Death. 19 come into fashion for simple families. Dinner was soon over, and we went back to the drawing-room. It was a double-room ; a good sized one and a small one, opening to each other. Aunt Di went at once to the smaller one, as she generally did, and seated herself on the capacious old sofa. She liked to be away from our chatter in the other room she told us. Presently I followed her, and sat down at the table with my work. A girl on the point of marriage has no end of sewing to do. Mine, this evening, lay in hemming strips of fine muslin. My father, Thomas East, had been the chief solicitor in Pressgate. He had a large practice, both town and country, and was universally respected as a man of integrity, clever and painstaking. But he died early ; just as Tom, our only brother, was of age and able to succeed him. Our mother had died years before, and her sister, Aunt Dinah, Miss Richardson by title, had then come to take care of me and Margaret. She continued with us after papa died, all things going on in the home as before. Papa had died well off; leaving three hundred a year to each of us, his two daughters; which would descend afterwards to our children if we married and had any. Aunt Di had her own money ; a nice little fortune. I was already engaged—to Lionel Payne. He was a civil engineer, steady and clever, and likely to get on in his profession. We were first engaged in the spring, and it was now October. During most of the interval he had been in Sweden, superintending the making of a railway. He there met with an accident, upon which fever supervened, and he was sent home to recover health and strength. In January he was to go back to Sweden, and—J with him. Meanwhile, now that he was better, he busied himself with some local works belonging to the same company. About six weeks ago there came to us on a visit, Eva Bellair. Her mother had been a cousin of papa’s, had married an officer in the army, and gone out with him to the West Indies. There Captain Bellair had died, and Eva, the only child, was sent to England for her education, her vacations being spent with some relative of her father’s. ‘This relative was aged and ill; Eva, who had now left school, no doubt found her house dull, and she wrote offering to pay a visit to us. I and Margaret eagerly accepted it: girls are ever ready for fresh companions. Eva was beautiful, without doubt. She was vain and worldly to her fingers’ ends ; but—was she also deceitful ? I think Lionel had been taken with her when she came. She seemed to burst upon us all as a lovely vision, capturing our hearts by storm. The only one she did not fascinate was Tom. It was singular that Tom had disliked her at first sight ; she gave him a feeling of aversion instead of the opposite. “Fall in love with her /” cried he, when, coming home from church in a storm the first Sunday, he had held the umbrella over ECoOnniclboooks (CO