Her Faithful Knight — page 228: what you’re looking at

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

224 _ A Widower’s Letter. affairs, if you will pardon me for saying so, do not con- cern me.” With that Dr. Wentworth rang the bell for a servant to show Mr. Derrick to the door. Still in a state of hysterical excitement, the Hon. Darcy repaired to the hotel where he had spent the preceding evening, and at once ordered a bottle of whiskey, a siphon of soda, and pens, ink and paper. | Phyllis should know what he thought of her before another hour went by, and, under the combined influence of grief, rage, baffled love, venomous spite and repeated application to the spirit bottle, he indited the following letter to his supposed sister-in-law : “PHytLis: No doubt you think you triumph now that - your sister, my beautiful Dorothy—my wife, and the only woman I have ever truly loved—is dead and cold. In your bitter, crazy jealousy, you will not even let me see her face again, knowing, as you must do, that I love her dead body a million times better than I could ever care for you living. But for you and your evil influence, Doro- thy and I would have been happy together all these months. She was meant for me, put into the world for me, and but for you coming, like a poor, faded ghost of her, between us, we should have been together now, as we ought to be. I only cared to look at you because of your likeness to her, for I worshipped her from her portraits long before I saw her, and you were jealous even of them. You may, perhaps, in your wretched, in- sane infatuation for me, be hugging to yourself the thought that now that my wife is dead I may let you take her place. But in this you are utterly mistaken. Long ago I wearied of the sight of you, and now I abso- lutely hate you. Nothing shall ever induce me to look at you again. Don’t attempt to hold any communication EComicbooks (E(0)