The Argosy — page 232: what you’re looking at

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

— i — — A Free-Will Offering. 215 VI. Major Brown took a short tour, visiting Wiesbaden and Frankfort, to give himself time to think. At the end of five days he returned to Homburg considerably calmer in mind and resolved on a plan of action. He would appeal once more to Sara. He felt positive now that she loved him, and why then from a mistaken sense of duty should she sacrifice both herself and him to an ungrateful and exacting task- master? But though able to ascribe Sara’s conduct to a mistaken sense of duty, he felt bitterly that he {dared not try his own by the same liberal standard. He could not yet think of Nettie Drayton without a feeling of burning shame. He tried not to think of her at all. And indeed it was as much to be free from the inevitable bi-weekly Bournemouth letter as for any other reason that he had quitted Homburg. Swinging up the Luisen-Strasse he kept Sara and her sacrifice firmly before his mind’s eye. Such a life as she was preparing for herself! To be the wife of a man like young Wilson, the slave of his every whim, the object on which every temper would be vented ! The mere imagination of it made him hot. At the same instant he caught sight of Roger a few paces in front of him. He would have escaped down a side street, but that the young man suddenly turned, and seeing him, stood still waiting for him to come up. The Major noticed that his face was even paler and more haggard- looking than usual, and that there were deep, dark rings round his eyes. “How are you?” he inquired, touched in spite of himself at the sight; ‘and how’s your mother ?” ‘““She’s dead,” answered the young man, so abruptly and harshly that the Major staggered and leant up against a wail for support. ~- “Dead! What do you mean? What a ghastly joke!” he stammered at last, trying to force a smile. ‘‘Why, you frightened me out of my wits.” “We were far more frightened,” replied the young man doggedly, and in the same harsh voice, ‘“‘and not a soul here that we could turn to. You were conveniently out of the way of the bother. She was taken bad directly we got home last Monday night. When Sara came in at last I was nearly dead too with terror and misery. She sent for a doctor, but it wasn’t any good, and she died that night. She’s buried, too,” he added after a pause, looking up with a kind of impish triumph that gave the Major a hysterical desire to laugh. ‘ But how terrible ! and how dreadful for Miss Levison. What is she going to do?” he inquired presently. “I think it is far more dreadful for me, considering that she was my mother and not Sara’s,” Roger snapped out. ‘Not but that she CoOnnicloooks co