The Dugdale Millions — page 234: what you’re looking at

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

224 THE DUGDALE MILLIONS. intrigue into which she had been led by Harold Pier- — son. And the more she pondered upon the scheme the more detestable it appeared to her. Finally, with a firm determination, she resolved to go no further in the matter. Could she have communicated with Harold Pierson she would have done so, but the hour was too late and so she went to bed, proposing to let Bob find out that she had retired from the scheme by finding that the window had not been pre- pared for him as she had promised, and expecting to explain to him, upon the first opportunity, her reasons for abandoning the scheme, even though it promised to give her proofs of her husband’s infidelity. There were occurrences during the night, however, which threw her plans into confusion. Early the next morning she was awakened from her sleep by excited poundings on the door. She opened it to be informed that during the night the house had been broken into. With a consciousness of guilt and trembling with excitement, she hastily threw on a dressing-robe and descended the stairs. She knew that the event was the outcome of her talk with Harold Pierson, and though she had not been told that it was in the library that the attempt had been made, she went directly to that apartment. The window was open, the shutters thrown back, and the cool morning air was pouring through the room. On the table she saw the Jenkins box. With a devout sense of thankfulness she recognized it and, hardly knowing why, she hast- ily caught it up and placed it in an unused drawer, drawing some papers over it. She had barely ac- complished this when Mr. Stanton entered the room, He was too intent upon the burglary to notice his wife’s agitation, and if he had, he would probably have attributed it tothe event itself. He went over to the window and discovered that the shutters had been ; Comicloo S C@ 3