Gratia's Trials — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

-QRATIA’S TRIALS. 147 as I have been would allow you. To-morrow you will leave — the shelter of this roof forever.” ‘‘ What have I done to be thus turned out of doors?” Gratia wailed. ‘‘If Colonel Falconer were at home I should not be without a friend.” ‘‘It is like your brazen-faced insolence to think that you could captivate. him also,” Mrs. Falconer rejoined, in hot wrath. | Gratia shrank back and colored scarlet at the unlooked for interpretation that Hugo Falconer mother had put upon her words, ‘© Ay, you may well cower. But Hugo would never allow his uncle’s house to be turned into a harboring place for mur- derers. I have borne much for his sake. I have endured a great deal, because he left you, as it were, in my charge ; but the limits of endurance have been long since over-passed. Go, I say, and let me not see your face again,” Gratia made no answer. She knew well that any words of hers would only be as fresh fuel to the flame of the virtuous matron’s indignation. ‘“How came you to admit her‘into that room, Scipio?” an- grily demanded his mistress, ‘* Had you no sense of propriety ?” ‘Well, ma'am,” said Scipio, sturdily, ‘‘we all on us done has our own ’pinions on dis subjeck, an’ mine is dat Miss Gratia, she’s as innocent of knowin’ any ting ‘bout dis yar murder as your own darter, ma’am. An’ I hadn't no orders to let no one in pa’tic’larin, nor keep no one in patic lar out.” ‘*Fool!” cried the lady, sweeping past him, and deigning no further notice. Gratia Kempfield had gone up to her own apartment with a sense of frightful desolation and solitude about her. She had not a friend in the world to whom she could apply in this hour of sorest need; and she dropped her head on her hands and cried out in hee agony. Eomicbooks.co