Geoffrey's Victory by Mrs Georgie Sheldon — page 312: what you’re looking at

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

308 PEACE AT LAST. You found that ring?” he asked, amazed. ‘Yes. I visited a certain cottage among the mountains of New Mexico last summer, and while standivg upon one of the steps leading up to the door it gave way, and underneath I found this ring.” | “Ah! we never thought of looking under the step,” said the colonel, musivgly. “It was a little loose for her finger just then, and, slipping off, rolled away out of sight, and we thought it very strange that we conld not find it. Yes,” he continued, taking 1t up and regarding it tenderly, ‘‘Annie Dale never had her engagement-ring until the day of her marriage, when this Was put on her finger as a guard to her wedding-ring! Aunie Dale was my loved and honored wife, Everet, and Geoffrey, my son and hers,” indicating the young man by a motion of his hand, ‘‘will show you the certificate of our marriage, and the ring with which she was wed!” ‘*Your wife! Annie Dale your wife!” Everet repeated, start- ing back, amazed, all his color fading again at those words, and shocked into more respectful speech by the unexpected ac- knowledgment. ~ CHAPTER XLVIII. PEACE AT LAST. ‘Yes, Annie Dale was my wife!” Everet bent a sullen look upon Geoffrey. “Then he is nota e An imperative gesture from his father silenced the obnoxious word that trembled on his lips. “Geoffrey Huntress, as he has hitherto been known,”’ he said, “ts my son, honorably entitled to my name, and an equal share with yourself of all I possess—a son whom [I Jong mourned as dead, but whom I have most gladly weleomed to my heart and home this night, upon learning who he was.” ‘Would vou have done so had you not been forced to it?” Everet rudely demanded. | ‘“Everet, you are very disrespectful to-night,” returned his father, with afrown, ‘I cannot understand why yon shonld manifest such a spirit of hostility. But we will not talk more of this now; vou shall have the details of the story of my early life later. I trust, however, that your sense of what is right and just will prompt you to some acknowledgment for your dis- eourtesy toward your brother.” ) ‘“‘My brother!’ retorted Everet, aroused afresh at the word; ‘che has been nothing but a stumbling-block in mv path ever since I first saw him; he humiliated me before friends in a way that I have never forgiven; he thwarted me in my hopes ag eollege and in many plans—all but the last one,” he concluded, comicloolks GO