Guy Earlscourt's Wife — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

28 =6At St. George’s, Hanover Square. le discovered by .a passing policeman, with a suspicious bundle in his arms. Still, like a man in a dream, he started forward in the direction the girl had pointed out, found the sabstand, and in five minutes more was rattling over the stony streets, Bloomsburyward. Then he opened the shawl. Day was bright!y breaking, and the first little pink ray stole in and kissed the lovely sleeping face, framed in tiny flaxen curls. A baby! and he was taking it home? This was how the ad- venture of this night had ended. And he had said he wou!d be painting at the Royal Britannia, until daylight. “Powers above!” thought Mr. Mason, his very heart seem- ing +o die within him. “What will Rosanna say ?” oe 2 CHAPTER VII. AT ST. GEORGE'S, HANOVER SQUARE. The sun was just rising as the hansom tore through the quiet styeets of Bloomsbury, waking the peaceful rate-paying, respectable, third-class inhabitants from their slumbers. He reached Half-Moon Terrace—he paid and dismissed the cab. . Duke opened the kitchen door, stalked in, and confronted his sister. “Duke!” - Only one word, but the tone! In some such voice of an- euish may the great Napoleon, at St. Helena, looking back at one disastrous day, have exclaimed, “Waterloo!” “Tt’s not mine, Rosanna—I swear it’s not!” Duke eried out, as he held out the infant imploringly. “I never set eyes on it until within the last two hours!” “Not on it, perhaps—but its mother “Nor its mother either-—so help me! until three weeks ago! Good gracious, Rosanna! what a mind you must have to sus- pect a fellow in this way, without giving him a chance to explain! I never saw the child until it was given to me—no, forced upon me, by Jove! two hours ago; and its mother, if she be its mother, I met, for the first time, three weeks ago down in Lincolnshire.” “And yet you fetch the child home! Misguided young man! Do you expect me to believe such a story as this?” ‘“Y expect you to believe the truth. Don’t stare at me in that uncomfortable way, Rosanna, as if you were the Gor- gon’s head. If you’ll take the child, I’l] shut the door, and > ‘ ~ ) . . comicbooks.com th he ne t! m m OL i