Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 184: what you’re looking at

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

A SEVERE THREAT. 177 Iam) love him ; but he zs my husband, after all—nothing can alter that fact |” And Lady Venetia buried her face in her white jeweled hands. * Aunt Esther looked thoughtful. ‘‘T never could understand your infatuation, Venetia,” she observed at length. ‘‘ Here you are, the orphan daughter of a peer, with perfect beauty and an immense fortune. Young as you are, hundreds have knelt at your shrine, my dear; yet you turn blindly from them all. Why, you might have worn a ducal coronet, Venetia, for the Duke of Knight was half mad about you ; yet you had eyes for no one but a miserable civil engineer like Lloyd Vernon. Yet foolish passions like that are often ephemeral, and yours would have died a natural death but for your own mad perversity. You followed this handsome dark-eyed Vernon to America. ‘True, no one but myself sus- pects the dreadful truth, for the world believes that we merely crossed the water for a pleasure tour, and knows nothing of our accidentally (?) meeting Vernon in San Francisco; even the boy himself did not dream that the accident was beautifully de- signed. It was but a chapter of accidents, after all,” continued the old lady, musingly, while a sarcastic smile crossed her thin lips for an instant; ‘‘ for, once in America, you threw yourself upon Lloyd Vernon’s pity (Venetia, I was in the adjoining room at the hotel, and heard every word of your interview) ; and you told him the simple truth—of your mad, unreasoning passion. You, Lady Venetia Chandos, descendant of a long _ line of noblemen, stooped to tell a beggarly nobody that you loved him—loved him so dearly that your life was a barren waste without him, and threatened to end it unless he showed you some affection. Poor boy! he was dazzled by your won- drous beauty ; the siren’s spell was upon him, and, acting from the impulse of a tender heart and an honorable nature, he took the leap which, if I mistake not, he is repenting now in dust and ashes. He made you his wife. You were willing to bury comicbooks (ele)