Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

116 A SEVERE THREAT. discerned, ‘‘told me to keep to the right, and in two hours I would reach Waltham. The righé was evidently the wrong in this instance. Well, I'll seek shelter here for to-night; it is getting late, and I dont like the looks of the sky over in the west yonder. It is going to storm, or I’m mistaken. I'll beg these people to keep me until morning, and then I'll be off for London and sweet Geraldine Vernon. What would she say, I wonder, if she knew that I have worn her picture over my heart for three long years! Beautiful Geraldine—-‘ my lady Geraldine’ we used to call her, in those old days of the past.” He had the gate open by this time, and was hurrying up the long avenue, neglected and strewn with dead leaves, toward the building which loomed in the background. A great, gray, ruinous pile, covered with clambering ivy, and with decay and desolation stamped plainly upon it. He hesitated a moment, and his eyes wandered over the front of the gloomy old mansion. ‘‘Looks deserted,” he muttered; ‘‘but no, there is smoke issuing from the chimney, and He paused abruptly, and a look of incredulous wonder — dawned in his eyes. For peering at him from an upper win- dow, plainly discernible, was a woman’s face—a beautiful face, with a cloud of tangled golden hair falling over graceful shoulders. Only an instant, and then the vision vanished. The young man stood as though riveted to the spot, his gaze fixed upon that closed window ; one hand sought his breast and touched the portrait hidden here ‘‘Impossible !” he muttered, incredulously, “« quite im possi- ble ; and yet—my God! how like her it is !” He was recalled to his senses by a sharp lightning flash, fol- lowed by the low rumbling of sullen thunder in the distance. He ascended the steps of the broad veranda and rapped loudly at the great weather-stained door. A long pause intervened, broken only by the roll of thunder, nearer now, while sharp streaks of lightning began.to come and go in the black sky. ‘Then the sound of shuffling footsteps =) cEomicbooks.co