Her Faithful Knight — page 171: what you’re looking at

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

For Phyllis’ Sake. 167 “T used to. But I have not tasted it for quite three vears now. In fact,” she added reflectively, “I can hardly say that I have dined for three years, although, of course, I have had food of a sort.” He looked earnestly at her, and a moisture crept into his large, blue eyes. “It makes what I eat half choke me to think of it,” he said in a very low voice. “To think, I mean, of you and your sister, beautiful and friendless, working your youth and health away, facing starvation and death together, and yet retaining that lovely, lily-like purity of mind that sets you apart from almost all the women I have ever known; I can't tell you how the thought of it touches me. Now, I am not going to weary you by any outburst of sentiment, so don’t look at the clock and take your gloves up. We have plenty of time to get across to the theatre, and I must say one thing to leave in your mind as a parting thought. It rests with you whether you and your sweet sister go on leading these cruel, wasted lives, or whether all your troubles and worries cease at once forever. There! Don’t look frightened. I won’t say one word more on the subject; but don’t forget my words.” She did not forget them. She recalled them over her solitary supper in her mean little lodgings that night ; she went to bed and lay awake thinking of them; and,.lying there in the darkness, she owned to herseli that had it been Aylmer Read instead of Darcy Derrick, she would have accepted his offer with a light heart, and even not without a certain tremulous gladness. | It was not, she told herself, that she was in love with Aylmer Read, whom in her life she had not met half a dozen times. But, given sufficient time and opportunity, she might well have become so. Something in the Comicboo “S (E@)