The Argosy — page 327: what you’re looking at

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306 “Ghittering Gold.” I see the game beginning, at any cost to myself I will speak out plainly.” ‘And earn for yourself some such sobriquet as ‘The Beautiful Jealousy!’ Why, I could turn such a proceeding to my own ad- vantage with all the ease imaginable! Ah, my dear, you may have the beauty, no doubt—but the wit, that is mine! and I will show people which pays the best in the long run. With all your beauty you have never yet had one single downright offer of marriage, while I have had already nearly a dozen.” “Vou are boasting of your shame, Nellie. But for this man— he was made of different stuff from the others you have trifled with ; he knew nothing of the arts of such girls as you, and his honest kindness to both of us ought to have been his protection from your unwomanly vanity.” A low, light laugh answered her words. ‘““He seems to have gained ove of our hearts, at any rate!” ‘No man will ever win my heart so easily. But I say plainly that I both like and respect Mr. Etheridge, and it was hard to give him my hand in silence this evening, Nellie, dumb from very shame of my own sister’s conduct.” ‘““Oh, don’t distress yourself, I beg ; you are not my keeper. And besides, I only filled a temporary gap in the good man’s heart. Have you not yet discovered, my dear, that Mr. Etheridge’s real mistress is—Business? If his usual occupations had been at hand, do you suppose he would ever have wasted a thought upon me? _ Business, my dear Olive, is to him all-sufficient.” ‘Tt may have been so in the past, but it can never be so again, Nellie. You have awakened in him new hopes and new desires, which will die hard ina man of his resolute nature. And you did this deliberately, with no other intention than that of crushing those hopes at their strongest! Oh, I may well be ashamed of my sister!” Could this be Olive Branscombe’s calm, even voice—these pas- sionate tones of pain and indignation—or was he still dreaming? Robert Etheridge, with a sudden start, shook himself wide awake and conscious. No, he had not dreamed the impassioned words which still rang in his ears. ‘The two voices were still audible in the silence of the night, but now so lowered that only subdued murmurs reached him. Evidently the room next his own was that night for some unknown reason occupied by the sisters, and their voices, penetrating the slight wooden partitions of the chalet, had half awakened him from the restless slumber into which after long tossing to and fro he had at length fallen. He had been dreaming of Nellie, and the voices had so woven themselves into his dream that at first he could scarcely tell how much he had dreamt and how much heard. But the sub- stance of the conversation remained indelibly printed on his brain, and the earnest, indignant tones of Olive’s protest still sounded in his Eomichbooks.co