His Other Wife: A Novel — page 308: what you’re looking at

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

300 LEDA’S COUP D'ETAT. evening, enjoying such delightful recreation the more be- cause of their long confinement in the sick-room, where for weeks they had relieved each other in the duties of nurse. Meantime Leda had passed swiftly from her chamber, through the unlighted parlor, into the library. The moon shone brilliantly, and poured a flood of silvery whiteness through the open casements. ‘The sick man sat absorbed in reverie or asleep, she could not tell which, for his eyes were closed and his form motionless. It frightened Leda to look upon his countenance, white as porcelain and almost as transparent—so etherealized by long illness and the effects of his burning fevers, that he looked more like an embodied spirit than a man, reclining there upon his cushions, with the pale moonbeams shining over him. The soft trailing of Leda’s dress caught his sensitive ear, Without opening his eyes, he said, feebly: ‘Ts it you, mother?” ‘‘No; it is I—Leda.” The voice was tremulous and suppliant, and, raising his lids, Warren saw kneeling before him, with her hands folded on her breast, and her beautiful pale face sadly drooping, Leda, in the full blaze of the moonlight. He did not speak nor stir for a little while. The change in her was almost as startling to him as she had found it in himself. -The almost dazzling splendor of her royal beauty had given place to a delicate, chastened, and, in her, pa- . Eomicbooks.¢o