Beautiful but Poor — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

; BEAUTIFUL BUT POOR. “which. she could not for her life restrain, she went on with her task. | It lacked but a little of the noon hour when she heard his well-known step close to her table. And she trembled when she replied to his kind salutation, ‘“Good-morning, Miss Hattie.’ At that instant is eye caught sight of ‘the letter, and his face fiushed as he said, in a low tone: ‘Heaven bless you for this quick reply,’’ snatched it up, thrust it inside his vest over his beating heart, and went as fast as he could go to his office. Hattie never was so glad to hear the signal to knock off work for dinner as she was then. Forshe could not keep her eyes on her work. She was think- ine’ how he must feel when he read her letter, for she had known what love was, and what disappoint- ment was, too, and she pitied him from the inmost depth of hae woman’s heart. And he? Locking himself in his private office, he quickly opened the letter on, which he felt all his future life depended. With pallor on his face he read those words, written so kindly, yet blasting the brightest hope he had ever cherished. “Tt is even as I feared,’’ he murmured. ‘‘The flush in her face when I returned that sketch which. she said had been sent to her by a dear friend, should have told me not to hope, had I not been too blind. The occupant of that wild mountain home—he who is pictured as kneeling there above that rushing river—is the HODDY man,.and I—I have nothing on earth to hope for.’ He folded her letter in his own, pressed it to his lips, and. placed it in an inner pocket over his heart. And he sat there, silent and still, while tears came in his blue eyes, and yet he made no