Guy Earlscourt's Wife — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

resolyo.’ «© re ouse dissolved, n iu the heart hree yeurs ago life, I will see anding ‘preast- of corn-flowers sweet summer ve rosy light of v sixteen, and on, an orphan idonnas, and a est of her sex. ir to a baronet, d injunction— d, that fortune Je ubtful whether IT think now it if she hind told 1, of course; he jim, indeed, in 1 upward, anid face in the fad- most approve: ere clandestine yr the moonlheht nad elapsed, we other, we would 1 Was very near. yosom. friend in ter that nothing rave. My pocr loaming, as shie her. Salvation golng across [9 fing, and having lage was easy 1 ceremony some y life. She was ed proposal, but iy of the kouse- sure with which m. _ from her. She went to # The 3 Told in the Twitight. ext morning 1 went to my employer, and asked a holiday. ™1t was the first hypocrisy of my life, and I bungled over the Weimple request, until he looked at me with wonder. but he SS yranted it. I left the Court ostensibly to visit m- godfather, Win reality to travel to Scotland at full speed. > “On the very day of my arrival, a pouring September day, our marriage took place. A superannuated old man, who had “been a’ minister, but whose too strong proclivity for the whisky bottle had caused a suspension of his duties, per- “formed the ceremony readily enough, for a few crowns. We-were married according to Scotch law, without a single ‘Awitness, but whether such a marriage contracted by a minor Sunder such circumstances would hold in England, is an open question. | © “When her fortnight among her Sesttish friends expired, “she returned home. I followed her in two days after, and Sthings went -n in their old way—the moonlight walks, the se- *Seret meetings, the old vows, and talk, and bliss—old as Hden the sweeter always for being stolen. | | “She pleaded so hard not to be sent back to school until after Christmas, that her uncle, indulgent in all minor mat- ters, consented. * “The autumn passea—sucn a gczlden autumn! We had ebeen four months married, when our well-guardcd secret was ‘discovered. My employer s?'d nething—he was a man rather to act than to talk—but suddenly, without a word of warn- ing, my wife was spirited away. I was sent early one day on ga commission to the neighboring town; when I came back she was gone. That is more than two and a half years ago. “=k have never :een her but for one moment sinee, and that was yesterday.” | i] = He paused again to hight another cigar. Duke understood him pertectly. THe was intensely inter- ested in this story—far more interested than the narrator vet i knew. ~~ “There was no scene; the uncle met me even more blandly a : bed P : ; ; ra e polite than usual; but I felt he knew all. Two days after, while I was still unresolved what course to pursue, he called me to his study-—his valet was busy about the room, I remem- _ & ber, at the time—and locked up in his safe, in my presence, a + quantity of unset jewels, and a sum of money in bank notes. It was an old-fashioned safe, with an ordinary lock, by no *# means the kind in which to intrust three thousand pounds’ ~~ worth of family diamonds, and six hundred pounds in money. ~ He was dictating a letter to me while he did this, and I saw } him put the key of the safe in his pocket. : “<T am going *o Swansborough this evening, Robert’ he eRe ; comicbooks.com