Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

130 A At ee THREAT. hushed and still under its snowy cover, and now the violets were beginning to peep through the mold. She raised her eyes at last and saw her father standing before her. ‘* Geraldine,” he said, and his tone was less harsh than usual, ‘fare you ready to obey me?” She started, as though awakened from a dream. ‘‘Obey you?” she repeated, calmly; ‘‘what do you mean?” ‘‘T mean this. Are you ready to become Lady Sydney ?” She arose from her seat, her pale face aglow with scorn and indignation, one slight hand uplifted, frail and white. ‘* Father,” she faltered, but her voice was full of sternness, “‘T am Howard Ashleigh’s wife.” ‘‘Howard Ashleigh’s wife !” repeated the old man, with a- wicked sneer; ‘‘I thought that folly was ended ; besides, even eranted that the marriage was aught but the farce it was, Howard Ashleigh is dead.” She did not faint ; she did not shriek aloud or cry out in her mortal agony ; she stood before that cruel old man like some wild creature that had received its death-wound, yet still faces its pursuer with eyes full of pitiful entreaty. But there was no pity, no mercy, in Lionel Vernon’s heart. ‘“Yes,” he went on, slowly, ‘‘ Howard Ashleigh is dead, and he ought to have died tee ago, before he ever crossed your path. See!” He laid a folded newspaper before her, and pointed to a marked paragraph. With a slow horror stealing over or heart, Geraldine de- ciphered these words : ‘‘Dirp.—Suddenly, in Glasgcw, Scotland, Nov. 1, Mr. Howard Ashleigh, a native of South Carolina, U.S. A., aged » 27 years, ” When she glanced up from that fatal paragraph, she was all alone in the room, and night was. slowly creeping over: all things. She crouched in a corner of the couch upon which she had fallen in the first horror of that awful blow, and cowered comicbooks.co 3