The Argosy — page 185: what you’re looking at

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

170 Divided. munings with Nature, partly from her intimacy with an ignorant and credulous fisher-folk, who believed in the weird legends of their chost-haunted Bay of Andierne as implicitly as they believed in the Gospel taught to them by Monsieur le Curé. Thus Yvonne grew to womanhood, absolutely ignorant of life, beyond what she read of it in books—a strange, passionate-hearted little creature, with the melancholy of the sea in her eyes and full of undeveloped possibilities for good or for evil. In her monotonous existence, Raoul de Kériadec had been the one bright spot of glowing, vigorous life and buoyancy. He was young and, like Yvonne, companionless. Like her, he revelled in the sea, in the liberty and beauty of Nature, in the glorious excitement of battling with the elements when they raged together in frantic tumult, as they so often did on that storm-bound coast. But, besides this, he possessed lively animal spirits, and a boy’s delight in the mere fact of living: he was brave, generous, loyal ; and the con- tagion of his energetic verve lifted Yvonne out of her quiet dreami- ness and taught her, when with him, to be thoughtless and gay, as all young things ought to be, at times. She did not share Mademoiselle Mathilde’s lofty expectations ; such a thought never entered her head. JBut she did regard Raoul as, in some sort of way, her own especial possession. He was all in all to her, and she doubted not that she, in her turn, was all in all to him, It never occurred to her that any other woman could step between them and put a check on their golden days together, or that she could ever cease to be his favourite companion and the confidant of all his thoughts. His engagement to Denise came upon her like a thunderbolt. She did not realise all that it implied; all the change it would make in her life. She was only conscious of a vague trouble and aching at her heart, that grew heavier day by day. O, the loneliness of that first year after his marriage! ‘The sense of being of no account to any human being in the world. ‘The weariness of long rambles by sea and shore without the well-loved companion. ‘The humiliation of being forgotten for the sake of a fairer face, of being left alone, as it were, in her old solitary world, whilst he passed on into one which was, to her, something strange and new and mysterious, in which she could have no part. All this she could have forgiven, if it had contributed to Raoul’s happiness; but it soon became common talk that the domestic annals of the de Kériadecs were not altogether peaceful; and Yvonne’s woman’s wit quickly divined much that was left untold. Her indignant, loving eyes noted every change in Raoul, and his gradually-increasing moroseness and despair. She knew that he was miserable, and that it was his wife who made him so. So she hated Denise with the bitter, unreasonable dislike of an ill-used child who sees an unworthy rival put forward in her place ; Eomichbooks.com