His Other Wife: A Novel — page 398: what you’re looking at

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

390 A MEETING. She looked into the calm, grand eyes once more, and in them she beheld home, happiness, friends, 777. * x * ** x * * But nothing of all this passed their lips; their talk was of Faith’s strange adventures, Warren felt it was neither the time nor the place to speak of love. For the present he was simply her guardian, her friend, her protector. With many misgivings as to what that fair, innocent being might have to suffer from the knowledge of alJl the dreary incidents that had transpired during her absence, he determined first to restore her to her proper place in the social world, and await the course of events. He simply informed her that a dreadful calamity had befallen her guardian ; that he had been tried and found guilty of a felony, and condemned to imprisonment for life, and that he was then in Pennsylvania, undergoing his punishment; that her mother was still absent; that Leda was residing in the city; and that for the present he would occupy the position of her guardian, and take her to re- side with his mother until he should receive instructions as to her own mother’s wishes in her regard. This programme was the best he could devise under the circumstances, and, by placing Faith in the seclusion of his own home, he could there defend her from the tongues of idle or cruel gossips until it was meet she should hear the whole bitter truth. Immediately after their arrival in , and after charg- ing his mother to permit no one saye herself to have any Eomicbooks: co