The Argosy — page 177: what you’re looking at

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

— SSS EE 162 Divided. wait for her luxuries. He troubled over it much, since he loved her to desperation and wished her to have every wish gratified; and he often encouraged her to point out to him what improvements she most desired, storing up her remarks in his mind with a view to their future gratification. We will make the place fit for you—when my ship comes home,” he would say. Unluckily, the ship showed no signs of coming home, or, if ever it did, it must have foundered on the reefs. At any rate, no money was forthcoming. However, by dint of one or two acts of self-denial, Raoul had been busy preparing a little surprise for his wife during her absence in Paris, How he had looked forward to her pleasure and gratitude, hoping that, perhaps, it would help them to take up life in a more friendly spirit when next they met! And the bitterness of his disappoint- ment at the present disheartening state of affairs is not to be ex- pressed. “The place will be very ¢vzste. ‘They did not expect us home for another two months, and nothing will be ready for you. You must make allowances,” he said, as they drove past the over-grown grass court-yard, enclosed by its tall, rusty iron gates. Ivy was creeping up the old sun-dial ; a seat, with one leg gone, was supporting itself in a lop-sided fashion; the whole place, from this point of view had a neglected appearance of poverty and decay, even now that the twi- light, as it melted into a silver moonlight, cast over all things a kind of spiritual and mystic beauty. On the terrace Mercury, on tip-toe, stood poised in ecstatic flight to the moon ; one could not see that he had lost one of his wings, or that Ceres, with her cornucopia, was . noseless and fingerless ; at night, at least, they might imagine them- selves to be brother and sister to the Apollo Belvidere or Vatican Hermes, belonging to the past world of immortal sculpture. Below, in the rose garden, a long alley of tea-roses gleamed white out of the shadows; glow-worms were lighting their little lamps all over the dewy lawns ; the gravel pathway shone like quick- silver. As they entered the hall, with its oak-walls and beams, and its polished floor, the tall white lilies in a china pot in one corner, making an harmonious little bit of picturesqne still life, there was a refreshing sense of coolness and quaintness. Round this hall ran a gallery out of which opened the bedrooms, all more or less in want of renovation, though worthy old Diana, cuisinitre and housekeeper, prided herself that such a horror as a speck of dust or a cobweb was a thing unknown within their precints. ‘Madame will be so good as to make excuses,” said this ocall soul as she received her master and mistress with manifold courtesies, whilst the little grey curls on each side of her head bobbed and shook. Eomicbooks.co