Her Faithful Knight — page 252: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXIV. AYLMER TO THE RESCUE. It was past four o’clock on a foggy Friday afternoon in March, nine days after the sudden departure of Dorothy and Cresswell from Lockhart Cottages, as Aylmer Read, chief sub-editor of the Daily Post, left the Fleet street of- fice of that journal with an unusually troubled and anxious expression on his handsome countenance. “Phyllis Knight,” he muttered to himself reflectively, pulling the ends of his yellow mustache. “There can hardly be two Phyllis Knights, both tall and gray-eyed and fair-haired, and formerly residing in the Hammersmith district. I wish to heaven I could contrive to communi- cate with her in some way. I always knew I should hear of her again, but I never thought it would be like this. By to-morrow morning she will have seen the warning—but there is always to-night, and the force are anxious to vin- dicate their character for intelligence after their fiasco in the Monro affair last month. Of course some terrible mistake has been made—but what a proud and sensitive nature such as hers, the shock and publicity will be cruelly hard to bear. And what in the world has become of that contemptible cur, her husband, Sergius Trevelyan?” From which soliloquy it will be understood that during the eight months which had elapsed since he had last be- held her Aylmer Read had by no means forgotten the lady who had once been his fellow student in the British Mu- seum sculpture galleries. In a locked desk at his present home there lay two GComicbdooks (<©) iim