A Heart's Bitterness — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

A HEART'S BITTERNESS. 31 mortgage falling due next month, I needed an heiress to rehabilitate the lands of Leigh, which, more than all else, I _ love. My ancestors built up our home by marrying birth and title. I have saved it by marrying millions. Am I worse than they? The Ainslie fortune will build up an ancient estate, which your children will inherit. Why ~ complain of that?” Violet hung her head. She felt ashamed at having opened this mercenary subject. In matrimonial battles with this hard and selfish heart, she must be worsted. Oh, a have grace always to endure in silence, to live only for uty. ‘‘T was wrong to bring this up, since it is too late for remedy,” she said, with a sigh. ‘So I think,” said Lord Leigh, calmly. ‘CHAPTER VIII. A LOST LOVE. It was a June afternoon, and a crowd of sight-seers surged in and out the famous palace of the Louvre. Among them, alone, went a sweet, youthful figure, followed © by curious and admiring glances as she passed along, solely — intent on the art treasures about her. , Finally she came to the place she liked the best, the temple-like rotunda, lit from above, and lined with deep crimson, where alone in all her matchless beauty stands the ‘‘conquering Venus” of the Louvre. Violet sat on the sofa placed at a little distance in front | of the figure, and her eyes sought the trinmphant face, the form so strong, so gracious, so dignified, yet all tenderness and enchantment. : The palace of the Louvre, with its treasure-filled corri- dors and galleries, died away from her consciousness, '. She went back to the dawn of her girlhood-—to her Lin- colnshire home, when at fifteen she lived there with her stern old grandmother, her elderly romance-repressing gov- erness, and her maid. How sedulously all poetry, romance, novels, had been shut out of her young life—she had been reared among all those elderly people as a young vestal. And yet, there romance and new-blown passion, the dawn © Gomichooks.co