The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

* 82 THE EVIL GENIUS. as ever, what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield ? The miserable sinner would end as she had deserved to end. Abso- lutely dependent on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help her—with a reputation hopelessly lost—face to face with the temptation to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them was rest in death ?”’ If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have seen her a living creature. But she was too young to follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end. The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as she might. Even in his absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in him szill, She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her when she had returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and considerate; he had listened to her little story of the relics of her father found in the garret as if her interests were his interests. There had been nothing to disappoint her, noth- ing to complain of, until she had rashly attempted to discover whether he was free to make her his wife. She had only herself to blame if he was cold and distant when she had alluded to that delicate subject on the day when he first knew that the divorce had been granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet he might have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than looking into the street, asif he had forgotten her in the interest of watching the strangers passing by. Perhaps he was not thinking of the strangers: perhaps his mind wags dwelling fondly and regretfully on his wife? Instinctively she felt that her thoughts were leading her back again to a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness recoiled. Was there nothing she could find to do which would i some other subject to occupy her mind than herself and her uture ? Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her father’s letters placed on the table by her bedside. The first three icetters that she examined, after untying the ‘aan were briefly written, and were signed by names un- nown to her. They all related to race-horses, and to cun- ningly devised bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them. Absolute indif- ference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common which her father’s correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning. , The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of some length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By comparison with the blotted scrawls which she had just burnt, it looked like the letter of a gentleman. She turned to ECORMICLOOOKS (EC) m