Gratia's Trials — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

GRATIA’S TRIALS. 83 for the secret she kept from him was kept from the whole world also. | ‘<Isn’t it nice, Gratia?” little Ida had cried, when Colonel Falconer had left them. ‘* You’ll have splendid dresses now, like Aunt Alberta, and you and I will go in the carriage to select them, and you shail go to parties, and dance. And you will be so pretty, Gratia, and every one will fall in love with you, as the Prince did with Cinderella. ” Gratia smiled at the child’s enthusiastic prattle, but the words sank into her heart. After all, why should not they come true? Her heart throbbed, and the bright tears sparkled in her eyes—tears of happy, tremulous anticipation—as she contem- plated the radiant possibility. ‘‘ Dear httle Raymond !” was her last thought, ere she fell asleep, long after midnight ; ‘‘if he only could know !” CHAPTER XVI, GRATIAS FIRST BALL ‘* How provoking !” cried Alberta Falconer, her brow flush- ing angrily, as she threw aside a mammoth pasteboard box which had just been delivered by an obsequious waiter at the door of her room, with a ‘‘ Jes’ come from New York, miss.” ‘“They have sent me a dress that the thinnest old maid in Long Branch couldn’t squeeze into. Does Madame Finelli think I’ve got the consumption, or gone into a decline?” Mrs. Falconer lifted up the dress, an exquisite lavender-col- ored crape, trimmed with festoons of black lace and lemon ribbon. ‘“‘What a pity!” she exclaimed. ‘‘Finelli must have od some of those blundering women cut from the wrong pattern. ‘‘But I made her promise she would always fit my dresses herself,’’ almost sobbed Alberta. Eomicbooks (E(0) im