The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

THE EVIL GENIUS. 151 ‘Friends? All the woman in her recoiled from that insuffi< cient word. ‘‘ Are we lovers?” she whispered. ¥ Vest’ With that one word her anxious heart was content. She smiled; she looked out at the sea with anew appreciation of the view. ‘The air of this place will do me good now,” she said. ‘Are my eyes red, Herbert? Let me go and bathe them, and make myself fit to be seen.” She rung the bell. The chambermaid answered it, ready to show the other rooms. She turned round at the door. ‘‘ Let’s try to make our sitting-room look like home,” she sug- gested. ‘*‘ How dismal, how dreadfully like a thing that doesn’t belong to us, that empty table looks! Put some of your books and my keepsakes on it while I am away. [ll bring my work with me when I come back.” He had left his travelers’ bag on a chair when he first came in. Now that he was alone, and under no restraint, he sighed as he unlocked the bag. ‘‘ Home?” he repeated: ‘‘ we have no home. Poor girl! poor unhappy girl! Let me help her to de- ceive herself.” He opened the bag. The little fragile presents which she called her ‘‘ keepsakes” had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem, and cowd be easily mended so as to keep the accident concealed. Consult- ing the waiter, Herbert discovered that the fracture could be re- paired at the nearest town, and the place would be within reach when he went out for a walk. In fear of another disaster if he put it back in the bag, he opened a drawer in the table, and laid the two fragments care- fully inside, at the further end. In doing this his hand touched something that had been already placed in the drawer. He drew it out, and found that it was a book—the same book that Mrs. Presty (the Evil Genius of the family again!) had hidden Shes Randal’s notice, and had forgotten when she left the 10tel. Herbert instantly recognized the gilding on the cover, imitated from a design invented by himself. He remembered the in- scription, and yet he read it again: ‘To dear Catherine from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.” The book dropped from his hand on the table, as if it had been anew discovery, torturing him with a new pain. His wife (he persisted in thinking of her as his wife) must have occupied the room—might perhaps have been the person whom he had succeeded as a guest at the hotel. Did she still value his present to her in remembrance of old times? No! She valued it so little that she had evidently forgotten it. Perhaps her COMMICLO® S (CO) m