Her Faithful Knight — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

118 Her First Rehearsal. feeble jokes, and long tirades on the subject of his down- trodden country. Unable to resist such a combination of attractions, the fair Zara was supposed to love the Irish- man madly at first sight, and to own the same to him in speeches of Swinburnian warmth and inordinate length. Snatching a lace scarf from the back of a chair, she was about to elope with him in a gondola when her flight was intercepted by the return of her future husband, her father and other members of her family circle. Nothing much occurred in the second and tkird acts, save an immense amount of talking, but finally, the fair Zara, after two years of married life with the English member of Par- liament, during which time her sole solace had been read- - ing her old lover’s political speeches in the newspapers, decided for the second time to elope with him, this time through a French window in the drawing-room in full evening dress. The English member of Parliament, much upset by overhearing the above arrangement, op- portunely arrived upon the scene as his wife and the Irishman passed through the shrubbery by moonlight. Promptly a duel was arranged, but the lady, rushing be- tween the combatants, received her husband’s shot in her shoulder and proceeded to die at great length immediate- ly under the limelight. Her last action was to throw her- self into the Irishman’s arms and kiss him, whereupon the wicked and tyrannical husband, making a step for- ward to interfere, was waved back into his place at the left-hand corner of the stage hy the lofty-minded Irish- man, who effusively returned the lady’s kiss as she turned rigid in his arms, then, raising his right hand to heaven while he supported her inanimate corpse with his left, he murmured, somewhat enigmatically, “Love’s Right!” At the reading of the play the Hon. Darcy Derrick had hardly been able to refrain from tears at what he con- ceived to be the poetic truth and beauty of the denoue- Eomicboo “S (S@)