Her Faithful Knight — page 298: what you’re looking at

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

) 294 The Exhumation. sumed. Even hopeless love is better far than love unre- turned. At half-past six he drove up again in a cab, and at once sought his study, where Dorothy, pale to the lips, awaited him in speechless anxiety. “The exhumation took place this morning,” he said. “I was present when the inquest was opened. The evidence was merely formal. The body was identified by Darcy Derrick , “As that of his wife Dorothy or Dorothea.” She stared at him with contracted brows and parted lips. | : “How can that be?” she whispered. “Surely he would know! ‘That was what I feared “It was a fortnight after death and this man Derrick had no suspicion. He had only to state identification? He scarcely glanced at the body, so they told me, but almost immediately afterward he broke into a cry about his darling wife and fainted.” “Fainted!’’ Dorothy repeated with ineffable scorn. “Dead off. I saw the fellow afterward and recognized him as the one I had seen hanging about Lockhart Cot- tages on the afternoon of the day when I found you.” “You went to Lockhart Cottages?” “Naturally. I wanted to see where you had lived and worked and suffered. And I wanted to warn you if I had a chance.” “T shall never be able to thank you. Go on telling me about to-day.” “Dr. Wentworth deposed to being called in bv Cress- well, who appeared half crazy with grief, and to finding your sister on a sofa in the diningy-room. He asked about the wound in her head and was told that she had injured herself as she fell. He had twice attended her as Miss Knight, but was afterward informed that her, name: