Lady Evelyn — page 260: what you’re looking at

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

‘Conquering the Conqueress. i 253 a second attack of paralysis. They bore him to his room, a physician came, and we were told that his earthly career Was run, “He was able to speak a little and move his right hand and arm. He whispered one word, ‘Roderick,’ and Colonel Drummond came and#tood by him. He smiled a little and beckoned the rector. Mr. Hall bent over him. ““Tell,’ he whispered, ‘tell all.’ | “Lady Clontarf and her daughter came into the room; he saw them, and motioned them forward. He still lay clasping in his own the hand of the colonel, and Lady Clontarf’s great black eyes- were fixed upon him (the colonel) with a look of such wild joy as I never saw be- fore in human face. We were all present—Clydesmore, Vivian Trevannance, and myself; and Mr. Hall, in falter- ing, broken accents, told the story he had to tell. “Colonel Drummond was not Colonel Drummond at all, but Lord Roderick Desmond, and rightful Earl of Clontarf. Over twenty years before he had been taken and tried for the murder of an Irish peasant girl—Kath- _leen O’Neal—and condemned to be hanged. “In some wonderful way he effected his escaped, and for twenty years he was a wanderer upon the earth, a branded felon, whilst his third cousin, Gerald, succeeded to his title and estates. Not only to his title and estates, but to the hand of his promised bride, Inez d’Alvarez. “You know, Veronique, how unhappily the-earl and countess always lived together. Now the secret is plain —she loved always the lover she had lost; she recognized him the first instant their eyes met. “Tt appears there had been’ in some way a conspiracy avainst this Lord Roderick. The girl O’Neal had a lover who was madly jealous of the young Irish lord, and it was he who had sworn him guilty. But in the strangest, most ~ providential manner they had met, when Drummond, as he called himself, left Warbeck Hall. He found this man— Morgan by name—wounded, dying, and tn his dying hour he made a confession to the rector. He had done the murder himself for which Lord Roderick had suffered. He made a full and clear deposition, and recognized. in Drummond the man he had so deeply injured, ere he died. — “And so we knew the secret at last, and the true Earl =~ of Clontarf stood before us—he would "| comicboo ks.com Ne oe haat rea wide, Pana ie eo Set ra PD ANT Ue . mye ih oa aieel