The Argosy — page 363: what you’re looking at

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

342 A Shpiritualistic Photographer. question. However, the expression on his face was neither a startled nor unhappy one, and it could not have been a fancy that the mouth had a softer and tenderer look upon it than usual. At this moment the Professor returned and, placing the second negative in my hand, whispered as he nodded in the Colonel’s direction : “No failure ¢heve, I fancy.” The next moment he might have looked and said the same of me, had I had eyes to see or ears to hear with, for standing out boldly from the negative was an exact counterpart of myself, every nerve stretched to its utmost tension and with the wearied and troubled expression that had been only too true an index of the feelings I had experienced in that chair of painful memories. While standing behind me, a little to the right and slightly leaning in my direction, was a perfect likeness of my brother as I had last seen him prior to his departure for America. Not that this second figure was as distinct and clearly defined as my own—it seemed rather as though a fine and almost imperceptible gauze had been drawn over it; and yet there the - figure stood; as easily recognisable to my eyes as it was to those of my mother—to whom, at a later period, and without giving any pre- vious account of the story I am now relating, I showed it. I was so entirely taken up with the surprise and mystification of my own thoughts as to have forgotten the Colonel altogether until a hand on my shoulder and a voice in my ear recalled me to the present. ‘“‘ Farquharson, you came here with me against your will, and so it is but fair that I reward you with a sight of the photograph which upset me so much.” As he placed the negative in my hand, I started back in astonish- ment, for there sat the Colonel as I have before described him, while bending over, and with the action of one who has a pleasant secret to whisper, was the lithe, graceful figure of a coloured woman (girl, I ought rather to say, for she could not have counted more than sixteen or seventeen years at the utmost), and a beautiful woman too ; with delicate, sensitive nostrils, and happy, smiling lips ; but these counted as nothing beside the wonderful depths of the dreamy eyes from which a soul of rare purity and unbounded faith seemed still to be looking out. ‘But, Colonel,” I began, when surprise would allow me to speak: “this 1s a coloured woman!” “Yes,” he replied, gravely ; “‘she belonged to a little story in my life, and was very dear to me indeed.” And so this accounted for the Colonel’s celibacy. I have my brother’s photograph by me now—at my mother’s death it was returned to me, for she could never be persuaded to part with it during her lifetime. And doubtless the Colonel has his also. Eomicbooks.co —$<$<$<—<$<— a Se eM ee ae | | i