New Nick Carter Weekly, No. 39 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

‘*T believed her unsupported word, and in my grief and disappointment I was ready to listen to anything that promised to take me away from the place where my false lover lived. ‘*Tafarge said that Mrs. Orrant was an actress, and the recipient of a handsome salary. ‘« *It is the easiest work in the wor'd for a woman of beauty and intelligence,’ he insinuatingly remarked, ‘and if you, Miss Laroche, were to adopt the stage as a profession I have not the slightest doubt but that you would succeed.’ ia ‘<T listened with dull ears until he said that he was on terms of intimacy with a leading New York manager, and that he could obtain a position for me at once if I chose to go North. + ‘**Vou wiil have to commence at the ___ Jowest rung of the ladder, as a matter of oa course,’ the plausible villain proceeded, _ *but it won’t take long to rise to a well- paying place. At the outset your salary will be ten dollars a week.’ “Ten dollars a week! Why, would support me comfortably. ‘*T Jooked at him with eagereyes. He smiled, and spoke a few words to the woman who had represented herself to be Jasper Orrant’s wife. “She left the room immediately after- award, and when she had gone he said: - *€*T have asked her to telegraph to New York about the place to make sure. I! ‘aa _ know it was vacant a few daysago. We will get an answer inside of half an hour: “While she was away he tried to enter- ith stories of the metropolis, of oes the pleasures the rich and well-to-do in- eS ulged in, and how a woman of courage on t ated had as good a chance of that q e .) dh. i B a i | . iba ee ) _ . a iy “4 ‘ at’ ; é pe $ . ' ¢ % ala EW NICK CAR’ a ER WEEKLY. ‘*She_bore in her hand a telegram. “Yafarge took it, read it, and then passed it to me withouta word.”’ Viola put her hand in the pocket of her dress and drew out a crumpled bit of yel- lowish paper. ‘Here it is,’? she said. ‘‘I have kept it in my pocket ever since.” ‘ Nick saw that it‘was an ordinary tele- graphic blank. He also saw, when he scrutinized it carefully, that it had not been filled out by an operator, for the reason that it lacked the official marks. ‘“This Mrs.\ Orrant,’’ he said, the dispatch herself. ”’ ‘*Ves, I know it now, but at the time I accepted the telegram as genuine. ‘‘As you will see, itis signed ‘A. M. Palmer,’ and says that the place will be held for Mr. Lafarge’s friend for two days. ‘“wrote ‘‘Just what persuasions were used to induce meto leave on the train for the North that afternoon I do not now re- member. If I had been as cool-headed as Iam now I would never have gone with out writing mother a more explicit letter than I did. But I thought at the time that I had a good place, that I was on the way to fame and fortune, which I ar- s dently desired, in order to punish Jaspe: Orrant by showing him what he had lost; = and that I could write a good long letter, giving ne fullest explanation of every- thing, 1 I was once installed in Mr. Palmer’s pa ‘“We arrived in New York, and e was taken to a hotel near the atten ‘*Mrs. Orrant did n pany thither. She got off somewhe 1é southern part of the city after we had crossed | the river, and Ih | ; hersince. 5