Her Faithful Knight — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

For Phyllis’ Sake. 171 at school, walk with head erect and toes turned at the proper angle, and, best of all, she could speak her own language without a trace of cockney and with only occa- sional blunders in grammar. In a word, she was very well educated. But of the nature of man as man, and woman as woman, of the difference between them, and the passions that move them, she knew exactly nothing at all. Otherwise she would never have decided before she fell asleep that night that perhaps it was her duty to become the wife of the Hon. Darcy Derrick. Darcy’s mother, when she arrived at Bournemouth on the following day, tried vainly to reason with her son on the subject of his infatuation for Miss Knight. “Of course, she is only hanging back to draw you on,” she said. “I wonder, dearest, you can let her play with you. You are getting positively thin and worn with worrying about her. And what is she, after all, but a penniless nobody, besides being the very worst actress I have ever seen.” : “She is a goddess!” he murmured. “The most peer- lessly lovely being ever born into this world.” “But you have talked like that of others,” cried his mother. “So many, many others, my dear son, whose names you have by this time forgotten.” “No woman has made me feel as this one does,” he re- turned. “Mother, I must have her—I cannot live without her !” He caught his mother’s hand in his hot, fevered clasp. “IT am going mad for love of her,” he said. “Her very coldness, her indifference, thrill me more than other women’s tenderest caresses. How exquisite, how raptur- ous it will be to see the coldness turn to red-hot hate, and from hate melt into burning love!” Eomichbooks (S@)