Gratia's Trials — page 211: what you’re looking at

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

202 - @RATIA’S TRIALS. ‘©The next thing, mother—the first and the only thing is to find Gratia. Where is she?” Mrs. Falconer burst into a weak tempest of sobs and tears. ‘For, unless, we find her, and that speedily,” Colonel Fal- coner went on, in a low, impressive voice, ‘‘her blocd will surely be upon the hands of you and yours. © ‘“Hugo, don’t speak so,” wailed Mrs. Falconer. I never meant it |” ‘What you meant or did not mean, matters little now,” he said, speaking in his strong self-restraint. ‘‘ The question is— where is she?” CHAPTER XXXVII. THE SISTERHOOD OF ST, HILDEGARDE. But Colonel Falconer, determined though he was to sift this mystery to its very foundations, found himself unable to secure any degree of success. For the very next day, even while Robert Falconer’s corpse lay in its coffin, _ Ida was stricken down with one of the most malignant forms of typhoid fever, and Alberta became the next victim, even while she stood at her lit- tle niece’s bedside’ When, or how, they could possibly have contracted the seeds of contagion nobody could imagine, but there they lay, fever-flushed and delirious, side by side, while the disease seemed to gain momentarily upon their besieged systems. The neighbors shrank within themselves ; a sort of conviction seemed to have seized upon them that the Falconers were an un- lucky family. Acquaintances and friends shunned the possi- bility of infection. The very servants packed up their few be- longings, and crept stealthily away, without stopping even to demand their wages, and Colonel Falconer and his mother found themselves left entirely alone, in this hour of their gréat- GEomicbooks.co