The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 184: what you’re looking at

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

THE EVIL GENIUS. 173 owned his love, and pleaded for an indulgent hearing. Her mind contrasted the dissimilar results. Pressed by the faithless man who had so cruelly wronged her in after-years, she only wondered why he had waited so long be- fore he asked her to marry him. Addressed with equal ardor by that other man, whose age, whose character, whose modest de votion offered her every assurance of happiness that a woman could desire, she had struggled against herself, and had begged him to give her a day to consider. That day was now drawing to anend. As she watched the setting sun, the phantom of her cuilty husband darkened the heavenly light, imbittered the dis- trust of herself which made her afraid to say Yes, and left her helpless before the hesitation which prevented her from saying O. The figure of a man appeared on the lonely path that led to the lodge gate. Impulsively she rose from her seat as he advanced. Im- pulsively she sat down again. After that first act of indecision the flutter of her spirits abated; she was able to think. To avoid him, after he had spared her at her own request, would have been an act of ingratitude; to receive him was to place herself once more in the false position of a woman too undecided to know her own mind. Forced to choose between these alternatives, her true regard for Bennydeck forbade her to think of herself, and encouraged her to wait for him. Ashe came nearer, she saw anxiety in his face, and observed an open letter in his hand. He smiled as he approached her, and asked leave to take a chair at her side. At the same time, when he perceived that she had noticed his letter, he put it away hur- riedly in his pocket. ‘‘T hope nothing has happened to annoy you,” she said. He smiled again, and asked if she was thinking of his letter. ‘Tt is only a report,” he added, ‘‘ from my second in command, whom I have left in charge of my home. He is an excellent man; but I am afraid his temper is not proof against the ingrat- itude which we sometimes meet with. He doesn’t yet make al- lowances for what even the best natures suffer, under the dete- riorating influence of self-distrust and despair. No; I am not anxious about the result of this case. I forget all my anxieties (except one) when lam with you.” His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject that she dreaded. She tried—as women will try, in the little emergencies of their lives—to gain time. ‘‘T am interested about your home,” she said; ‘‘I want to know what sort of a place it is. Is the discipline very severe?” ‘* There is no discipline,” he answered, warmly. ‘‘ My one ob- ject is to be a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures, and my one way of governing them is to follow the teaching of the Ser- mon on the Mount. Whatever else I may remind them of when they come to me, I am determined not to remind them of a prison. For this reason—though I pity the hardened wanderers of the streets, I don’t open my doors to them. Many arefuge, in which discipline is inevitable, is open to these poor sinnens already. COMMICLO© S (CO) im