A Heart's Bitterness — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

= an a - PTH —_t be o rc | L el a F YY ad i ~ ae > e * x Fas ae Serre yes Ce Pel Ree ANE ek dey oO Et 25 ti * - - , 4 * 1 134. - A HEART’S BITTERNESS, = ‘‘Confound the man!” said Leigh to Violet, between his teeth. ‘If I could ask him to the christening of twin boys at this date a year hence, I’d be the happiest man in the _ world—anything to stop his easy assumptions about inherit- ing Leigh.” From Clare’s wedding they went to Lindenwood for the Christmas festivities. Early January saw Violet and her husband at Lady Fanshaw’s pretty home in Sussex for the wedding of the charming Grace; and when Grace and her husband, Sir Tom, had been a week at Churchill Abbey, in Kent, the Leighs and others went there for a three weeks’ visit, and the splendid old abbey was in highest gala all that time. | The time drew near for going to London for the gay season. Unusually brilliant social events were anticipated, and the young Countess of Leigh looked forward with a natural interest to her independent entrance into the gay world, with her own house and her own entertainments. All Belgravia, with its stately palaces, had nothing more magnificent than the home into which Violet was ushered between rows of. liveried servants. Before the house lay the Green Park, with its soft, ver- dant turf, its stately trees, its surroundings of palaces. St. James’ and the Queen’s palaces, and Stafford and Spencer Houses were close at hand. Violet was in the inmost shrine of the English nobility, and her husband remarked to her, as he showed her plate and glass used by monarchs from the ‘Tudor times: ‘‘ Your cousin, Montressor, boasts of being tenth earl of his house; but [am fifteenth Earl of Leigh.” And when he showed her in the library a heavy gold shield, with the arms of Leigh in rich relief, he said, proudly: ‘‘ Sixteen quarterings, and never a bar sinister. It is a line worth - continuing.” But shortly the relief afforded Lord Leigh by these new scenes and excitements faded away, and the old questioning of himself as to where the man was who had come to threaten him, and what hand he had had in his disappear- ance, returned to him. Meanwhile the wild-rose tint paled on Violet’s cheek; her brown eyes shone, not with laughter, but with tears; her splendors mocked her, and were the livery of her bondage. Leaning back, one day, in her landau, all alone, her GEomicboo (E(0) S)