Guy Hammersley; or, Clearing his Name — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

88 GUY HAMMERSLEY. ‘‘No, my boy, he is not your brother.” ‘‘How can this be, though? If he is your son he must be.” ‘¢No, because I was a widow when I married your father.” Then came the inevitable conclusion which the mother had all along foreseen and dreaded. ‘But this little fellow cannot be more than nine or ten. Iam seventeen, and so—so if you are his very own mother, you can’t be mine. Is ittrue? Tell me, what does all this mean?” There was silence in the little room for an instant, while again, as during the former interview that had taken place there, the softened tones of Ruth’s violin came floating in, reminding Guy of the ‘‘ slow music ” he had heard many times when attending the theater and a highly emotional play was being performed. How little he had imagined that such strains would ever serve aS an accompaniment to a scene in his own life that was more thrilling in momentous interest than anything he had ever witnessed on the stage | ‘‘ Yes, Guy, my boy, it is true!” responded Mrs. Hammersley, softly. ‘‘ But that doesn’t prevent my caring for you as if you were my very own.” ‘¢ But why haven’t I known of this before?” Guy wanted to know. ‘‘Because, as I said, I trusted that it might never be necessary totell you. When I married your father, you were a little fellow of five, and I took you at once to my heart of hearts, in place of the baby I thought was lost to me forever. And with your Gomichboo <S) (€(@) m