Lady Evelyn — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

rons are generally the very devil either to love or hate. ie eT 6 Bok Gerald De oe = a “ smond. But he is madly in love; and really the Senorita d’Alvarez is very well worth loving—supposing anything is worth getting the steam up to such a pitch here below. She’s a royal beauty; she’s the heiress of a millionaire, with shares and bonds, and consols and coupons, and castles in Spain and bank stock in England. Only it would be such af infinite deal of trouble, | would fall in love with her and marry her myself.” “I wish you would,” Kathleen said, between her clenched, pearly teeth. “Why did she ever leave Spain? Why did she ever come “Here—between you and Rory? Ah! why, indeed? You see, Kathie, the don married an English woman, rich beyond all telling, and beautiful as—her daughter. Donna Inez has spent her whole life in a Spanish convent, in Valadana, I believe, and Don Pedro and his English donna went in for high life in our modern Vanity Fair— Paris. Then the English lady dies, and the Spanish papa waxes lonely, goes to the convent, claims his daughter, and starts with her for England, to present her to her English relatives by the distaff side, and—the ship catches fire off the Irish coast, and the crew take to the boats, and the two passengers are forgotten in the hubbub, and Master Rory and his yacht arrive in the nick of time to bear off the shrieking beauty from the devouring flames—a modern St. George and the Dragon. What a ‘scene it would make for the boards of the Princess or the Porte St. Martin! How the pit and the galleries would applaud! “You've not read many novels in your life-time, my Kathleen, and you're all the better for it; but if you had, you wouldn't need me to tell you the sequel to this de- lightiul romance. In yellow covered literature the cur- tain invariably falls, after a score or two of such tre- mendous sensations, on the crowning folly of man—mar- riage.” “Marriage!” Kathleen repeated, her breath coming short and quick—‘marriage, Mr. Gerald! Will Lord Roderick marry her?” 4 } “IT think it extremely likely. As I said, he is in a state 39 _ Of utter imbecility about her, and she—well, those impas- sioned, tall, black-eyed, dark-skinned, fiery-blooded south-