Her Faithful Knight — page 340: what you’re looking at

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

330 And Last. grave before Dorothy flew to the protection of a lover. Think of it, mother! While forging, plotting, and per- juring herself that I might think her dead, she was all the while living in this man’s house at St. John’s Wood, and to-day when I called they would not admit me. The tragedy of it lies in the fact that, ungrateful, deceitful and cruel as she has proved herself, I love her still. Were she really dead, as I believed until to-day, her entire for- tune would be mine; but I love her for herself, and 1 am so overjoyed to find that she lives that I must forgive her everything. Yet consider how she has made me suf- fer! She has attacked me savagely, has fled from me, preferred another man to me, publicly disgraced me, and dragged my name in the dust! And I love her so pas- sionately, so madly, that for the sake of her beautiful figure, her soft, fair skin and shining, gray eyes, her sweet voice, and the marvelous charm her whole personality exercises over me, I must forgive her and never rest until I take her to my heart, which her cruelty has gone near to break.” Darcy put down his pen at this point and read over what he had written. It was very affecting and a good deal true, and it brought tears to his eyes. He drank a tumbler of whiskey and soda, and set to work again with renewed vigor. “When I think over my life,” he wrote, “it seems to be made up of sacrifices for women. And yet only one woman have I yet met who is worthy of a sacrifice, and that is you, my tenderest and best of consolers and coun- selors, my sweet, beautiful mother! This is one of the darkest hours of my life, and but for the thought of your sympathy I might be tempted to end an existence which a poetic soul, an over-delicate sensibility and an intense capability for loving have rendered barren and desolate. I am not yet thirty-five, but what lies before me? I am CoOmicooolkks (©