The Argosy — page 350: what you’re looking at

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

Between the Songs. 331 suggested that she should take shelter for that night with Mrs. Cockle, of ‘* The Tit-mouse,” who had once been her nurse. Yes, he must really have loved her then at all events, for on the morrow he actually married her. Then they had gone away together, leaving behind them for ever all ties connecting them to Ayleshaven. Ah, well, but alas ! it had not been a happy marriage. As she stood just now in the old place at the mantelpiece, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. They had gone to London, where Albranzo had very evidently soon grown tired of her. She had always known that she could sing— had gone singing about all day in the old house upon the common, by very instinct, as the birds sing in the summer-tide. She had had the power of charming her brothers into good humour at any time, just through her voice; of softening her father. She had been a grand social success in little Ayleshaven just on account of this. Albranzo was not a musical man himself; but a great light in the musical world had come to the Albranzos’ lodgings one day, who had been startled, as perhaps he had never been in all his life before, by the sound of Madame Albranzo chanting a weird little hymn over her needlework. She had not completed her eighteenth year even then, and it was just as she reached her twenty-first that she suddenly burst upon the world, still under the patronage of the great musical light, as one of the most unrivalled prima donnas ever known. During these intervening years she had worked at the cultivation of her voice. Just about the time of her first success, Albranzo died. He had not beenakind husband to her in any one respect ; but she continued then, and ever after continued, to sing under his name. During his lifetime, Albranzo had resolutely forbidden her—through a spirit of cruelty, pure and simple—to make any inquiries regarding her family. A week after his death news came to her unbidden. Somebody, just arrived from Canada, quite incidentally mentioned an English family he had happened to come across there—a Doctor, with his three sons, Reuben, Geoffrey and Oliver. They had only come over from England themselves a week previously. He, the narrator, knew nothing as to the cause of their emigration; was ignorant even as to their ultimate destination. Was this all he had to tell—a//, Madame Albranzo had asked, gaspingly. -It was, he had answered, looking at her in surprise. ‘Then Madame Albranzo’s face had flushed crimson, and in the same instant became deadly white. He had wondered much, but turned the subject. Then the years had flown on again. The years had flown on. It had wounded her to the quick that they could have gone away without even a line in the newspapers ; for she had been a constant examiner of the agony columns. It was this that decided her, on her side, to make no attempt for reconcilia- COM () NOOKS (SO) im