His Other Wife: A Novel — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

SPINNING A WEB. 125 horrible than the chains of a galley slave. Ah! if you 3 had not left me Here her voice broke into sobs, and she buried her face in the cushions of the couch. The situation was in the last degree perilous and pain- ful—at any moment Mr. Croft or some one else might enter the library. Abruptly to quit her presence, after ' the piteous confession she had just uttered, would have seemed brutally unfeeling—to remain and prolong the discussion of a topic so dangerous, savored of treachery. To Warren’s chivalrous nature there was torture of the keenest in such an aspect of affairs. Besides, the idea that his Quixotic renunciation of this superb creature’s love had precipitated her into the abyss of misery, in which he now beheld her writhing like a gorgeous serpent in its dark cage, stung him to the core of his generous soul. He would have given his life that moment to repair the wrong he had done her through his mistaken consideration for her welfare—yet what could any act of his accomplish now more than the more serious complication of an already hopeless mistake? He must have been less than the great-hearted man he was to forbear some attempt to assuage the strong pangs of anguish that he beheld this woman suffering, and, as he now believed, through his ill-judged act. He was very pale, and there was’a solemn sincerity in his deep, low tones, as he said; ‘Heaven knows how honestly I sacrificed myself for (E(0) mM == EComicbooks: