Lady Evelyn — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

ee 84 i - Trevannance, of ear Rest, . At eerie it ULES. Rees rae sent be Tsay ; Eyes was a eS move and a aniversal lighting of ) cigars as they went. “And so we're to have her next Syeelc, ’ Major Langley remarked. “Pity, too; she'll spoil our sport with the partridges. When a man’s heart-hit himself, how can he be expected to bring down the feathered game? If things would only turn out in real life as they do in novels? The impregnable beauty’s horse runs away, and you rush for- ward and catch the rampant charger in the nick of time. Or the house catches fire—and she’s invariably left be- hind—and you rush blindfold through smoke and flames up to the fourth story, seize a wet blanket, fling it round - _ the object of your adoration, and spring with her in your arms out of the window—an odd matter of thirty feet or so—and the next instant crash! tumbles in the roof! Or she goes out sailing, and a white-and-black squall arises, and the boat goes on her beam-ends before you can furl the mainsail, and you take a header after the lovely one into the roaring breakers, and with her wnder one arm, strike out heroically with the other for the shore——” “And the shore’s invariably a desert island,” mterposed Trevannance, laughing, “where the bread and butter grow on the trees, and the trout and salmon swim up to your front door and beg you to catch ’em. And your beauty falls incontinently in love with you, the ‘preserver of her life and virtue,’ as the Ratcliffe heroines say, and marries you outofhand. Yes, my Henrique, it’s a thou- sand pities things won't turn out in every-day life as they do in three-volume literature. We might all be elder sons then, with thirty thousand a year when the reigning po- _tentate goes to glory, and the ‘loveliest of her sex’ hang- img like a ripe cherry ready to drop into our open mouth. As it is—well, Clontarf’s peerless daughter is for none of us, it seems, since his grace of Amethyst has been jilted, so well take heart of grace, and sing in her face: “Tf she be not fair for-me, What care I how fair she be?’ Ah! there’s a fellow in the open now!” - His fowling-piece rang out, and the rabbit rote over, _ riddled through the head. Sport abounded, and the four men separated i in the a : a pouth ee Rae. sew moments ue ~comiebook 0 has eee am? Shee A