Gratia's Trials — page 210: what you’re looking at

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

GRATIA’S TRIALS. 201 lightly over the banisters, like a gymnast, and so back again _ when I returned, leaving that awful thing in the library. I did not even know of the existence of the tray of china, although had I gone down or come up like any one else, I must have knocked it over, and made noise enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers ; and when the next day it was gravely put forward as a reason why I could not possibly have had anything to do with the matter, I smiled grimly to myself to see how neatly my friend and ally, Satan, had shielded hisown. More than this— I haven't told the worst of it—Gratia Kempfield had resented my attentions ; she had scorned me openly not a month before, and I had vowed to myself to be revenged on her; so I let the shadow of suspicion fall on Aer, not only to protect myself, but to carry out the vengeance I had sworn. But a dying man sees things differently, and if ever she will forgive me Lo AA's _ paused a moment, and then went on, with a choking spasm in his voice: ‘‘I mayn’t know it, but—but Z The blood gushed from his mouth with these words, the last he ever spoke, although he lived in an unconscious state until daybreak. _ When Hugo Falconer came out from the chamber in which lay the corpse of his brother, he looked his mother sternly in the face. In the dreary hours of that night-watch she had con- fessed to him the entire story of the systematic persecution to which she and Alberta had subjected Gratia Kempfield. She had told him, to his beundless surprise, of the meeting, only a few days previous, at the Arlington Hotel, in Miss Melworth’s presence. He had listened in silence, but with a terrible light- ning of anger in his eyes. Heliterally dared not speak, lest he should say too much to the woman who, whatever might be the heinousness of her faults,.was yet his mother. He knew all, and that was sufficient. And when the erring spirit of his brother had passed into the presence of Him who is“All-Merciful, Hugo came to his mother, and said; - Eomicbooks (€ @) m