The Bride Elect: or, The Doom of the Double Roses — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

130 THE BRIDE ELECT. conquer his plans. Robin, I have not deceived you. I took you with me to-day to meet this coming friend.” The young man heaved a long sigh. His brown hand went over his brow once or twice, as if to smooth out the lines of care and trouble. He looked at his cousin’s white face and heavy, tearful eyes, with a long, remorseful look. «Lady Kilmeny,” he began to say, ‘‘if this friend should come, the arrival would not make you happier. The ques- tion now is, which life are you going to cling to—the past or the present? ‘Those friends ms | ‘‘ Robin,” cried my lady, ‘‘the past is nothing to me. Have I not said so? But this friend—you know I left some with no farewell!” she said, in a sinking voice, with wistiul glance fixed on space. ‘©T can’t say yes or nay about a thing which I don’t un- - derstand,” said Robin, bluntly. ‘‘ But this I know, that if ZT had been given up willingly by my kith and kin for the sake of a grand house claiming me, I’d have little enough to say to the family who let me go, preferring news of my distant greatness.to my presence. ‘Then, how came you, Cousin Kilmeny, with that haughty face, speaking in every line of Strathmore’s noblest blood—how came you by such a failing heart?” She drew back, with her eyes flashing angrily. ‘¢ What right has your father to speak of my friends to you, or Gavin, or Kenneth? How dare he discuss my affairs, when I have forbidden him to mention them even to me? Kvyen now I think more of those friends than of any one in the length and breadth of Sutherland.” ‘‘ My father said that you would be pining after a poor printer’s lad, in your bonnie Aberdeen,” cried Robin, stung into cruelty, with lips that matched my lady’s own in their scornful cast, and eyes which, blue and sunny as they were, could equal the stormy wave which foams over the sunken rock; and in his present fiery expression and my lady’s darkening face, it was strange how these two resem- bled each other, despite the utter contrast in their type of beauty. _ My lady gazed at him with eyes once more the blazing lights of that too fragile face, now rosed and hectic with Pe aHORs and her hands went up in a wild clap to her row. | ‘‘Heaven guard my reason!” she cried. ‘‘ Does your Eomichooks, co