The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

92 THE EVIL GENIUS. him of that elastic readiness of mind which springs at once from thought to action. For a moment he hesitated; in that moment she looked up and saw him. With a faint cry of alarm she let the cloak drop from her hands, As helpless as he was, as silent as he was, she stood rooted to the spot. wei tried to control himself. Hardly knowing what he said, he made commonplace excuses, as if he had beenastranger. ‘I am sorry to have startled you; I had no idea of finding you in this room.” Sydney pointed to her cloak on the floor, and to her hat on a chair near it. Understanding the necessity which had brought her into the room, he did his best to reconcile her to the meeting that had followed. ‘‘ Tt is a relief to me to have seen you,” he said, ‘‘ before you leave us.” A relief to him to see her? Why? How? What did that strange word mean, addressed to her ? She roused herself, and put the question to him. ‘‘Tt’s surely better for me,” he answered, ‘‘to hear the miser- able news from you than from a servant ” ‘‘ What miserable news?” she asked, still as perplexed as ever. He could preserve his self-control no longer; the misery in him forced its way outward at last. The convulsive struggles for breath which burst from a man in tears shook him from head to foot. ‘‘ My poor little darling!” he gasped; ‘‘ my only child.” All that was embarassing in her position passed from Sydney’s mind in an instant. Sh> stepped close up to him; she laid her hand gently and fearlessly on his arm. ‘‘ Oh, Mr. Linley, what dreadful mistake is this ?” His dim eyes rested on her with a piteous expression of doubt. He heard her—and he was afraid to believe her. She was too deeply distressed, too full of the truest pity for him, to wait and think before she spoke. ‘* Yes! yes! she cried, under the impulse of the moment. ‘‘ The dear child knew me again, the moment I spoke to her. Kitty’s recovery is only a matter of time.” He staggered back with a vivid change in his face startling to see. The mischief done by Mrs. Presty’s sense of injury had led already to serious results. If the thought in Linley, at that mo- ment, had shaped itself into words, he would have said: ‘* And Catherine never told me of it!” How bitterly he thought of the woman who had left him in suspense—how gratefully he felt toward the woman who had lightened his heart of the heaviest burden ever laid on it! {Innocent of all suspicion of the feeling that she had aroused, Sydney blamed her own want of discretion as the one cause of the change that she perceived in him. ‘* How thoughtless, how cruel of me,” she said, ‘‘ not to have been more careful in tell- ing you the good news! Pray, forgive me!” ‘You thoughtless! you cruel!” At the bare idea of her speak- ing in that way of herself his sense of what he owed to her de- Gomicdooks (C©@)