The Argosy, Vol. 57

This installment of T. W. Speight's serial novel "The Grey Monk" (Argos, April 1894) presents two chapters establishing a mystery plot. In Chapter XIII, impoverished billiard-hustler Captain Verinder, aged sixty and living in Soho on eighty pounds yearly income, receives a surprise visit from his Italian niece Giovanna, a widowed woman of nearly forty who has come to England. During their conversation, Giovanna recounts her past marriage to a young Englishman, John Alexander Clare, whom she met in Italy, whom she later deserted in America after their child's death. Intrigued by her mention of Clare's father giving him six thousand pounds, Verinder resolves to investigate. Chapter XIV depicts his research: hiring a literary hack named Tring to locate the father, learning of Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, and traveling to observe Sir Gilbert at church. Verinder discovers through local gossip that John Alexander died abroad seventeen years earlier, information he brings to Giovanna, who learns she has been an unwitting widow all along. The text breaks off as Giovanna begins asking what these discoveries mean for her.