A Heart's Bitterness — page 231: what you’re looking at

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

A HEART’S BITTERNESS. 223 ‘‘Utterly and forever! Words cannot speak my detesta- tion of you, Helen Hope. You are a monster, a serpent in a woman’s form.” Helen rose. She was white as one dead. She shook like a reed in the wind. : ‘‘T see all is ended between us, Norman,” she said. ‘I will be revenged on you. Live now in dread of me! When you go out a nameless exile from the house where you were born, remember that Helen Hope—the woman you deceived, played with, despised, mocked, rejected—has stripped you of your honors, and brought you down to sit in that same dust from which she sprung.” She turned and left the ‘‘ Folly,” going as some dark - prophetess whose errand is done. Leigh sat as one stunned by a heavy blow. The words that he had read on the paper were branded on his brain. Instead of feeling energy and courage to rise to ward off or return the impending blow, he sat down in a heavy stupor, as giving up the battle before it had begun. Already he felt as if the fatal blow had fallen and he had met his doom. He returned to the Towers in this nightmare state. From afar he saw Violet on the terrace, with her boy in her arms. Would Violet try to save him for the sake of the child? CHAPTER XIUIX. : 97 “‘T AM COUNTESS OF LEIGH One of the prettiest villas of Kew was inhabited by Colonel Hartington, and his wife, the Honorable Lady Clare. Colonel Hartington and one of his friends were amusing themselves with knocking about the balls on the table in the little billiard-room in the east wing of the villa, when a footman announced that a lady was in the drawing-room, waiting to-see the colonel. 2 He found, apparently lost in a contemplation of a pic- ture, by Cuyp, above the fire-place, a tall, handsome woman, in a dark, rich dregs. (G0) Eomicbooks