Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

7 BONNY JEAN. CHAPTER XY. AN UNSEEN FRIEND. For a long time poor Jean wept and moaned in bitter agony, and her mother vainly essayed to comfort her. Philip was dead! That was the burden of her sorrow. Dead—foully murdered ; she felt certain of it. How came that sleeve-button in the little room at the Red Tavern, unless Philip had really been there? And the blood-stains upon the floor—fresh, frightful stains. The very recollection of them brought on deeper paroxysms of grief; and Mrs. Conway began to fear for Jean’s reason. At last she appealed to the girl’s sense of honor, her pride and self-respect. ‘«Jean,”’ she said, firmly. ‘‘do you forget that Philip Randall isa married man? Even were jou free’—a shudder of horror passed over Jean’s slender frame—‘‘ for notwithstanding the dreadful bonds with which you are chained, my child, they are nevertheless firm, and you evebound. Even were it otherwise, Philip is not at liberty to care for you, and he has never told you that he loved you, Jean.” It was when the poor girl’s grief was at its height that Mrs. Conway, chancing to turn away from the bed where Jean was lying, saw, to her surprise, scmething written on the white wall of theroom. Greatly alarmed at her strange discovery—for she knew that it had not been there before, and, of course, no one had entered the room without her knowledge—she determined | to find out, if possible, what it all meant. Taking the candle, she hastened to the spot, and read aloud the words which had been so mysteriously traced upon the wall, Jean watching her meantime with intense interest : ‘Do not grieve for Philip Randall.” (So ran the writing.) ‘‘ He is not dead, although he was a prisoner in this very room, 7 GComicbooks.co