Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 201: what you’re looking at

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

qe .¢ 2” ae r + “<— . adi oF ? .? PC ey POF, ee Wat aeee OCTAVIAS PRIDE - 191 In a SE NC which I am sure is obnoxious and distasteful to you.” | He did not raise his face from the flowers, nor glance toward the easy-chair. If he had, he would have seen the swift-coming blushes dispersed by a gentle agmity of man- ener, as new as becoming. ‘You are right,” said Will Yarrel; “‘ one who has been so kind to me, who is risking so much to help me, ought to know the circumstances of my history. Jane knew it all, and | am certain Jane would approve my telling you. It is a very sad story, and as strange as those you read in ro- mances. I suppose I was born in India, but I do not know more than Mathew Merle tells me. He says he is.my uncle, but I do not believe it; my whole nature cries out against the belief, and besides, if tt was so would he be so earnest to marry me to his son? Do cousins often marry here in England? It seems: wrong and unnatural to me, but it is not for that I most earnestly rebel. It is because George Merle, from my earliest childhood, has been the ogre and terror of my life. I was brought up, you understand, in Mathew Merle’s home. JHe has really a guardian’s power, and within this last year he has used it in the most tyran- nical fashion. ‘That was the head and front of my offend- € ing—that I utterly refused and protested every time it was’ , proposed—against a marriage with George Merle. You do not know him, of course—he is in India now, I suppose— but if you did, if you were on friendly terms, what is com- monly called well acquainted, you would never see, as I do, what a low, cruel, brutal nature is his. Huis father does not see it; he is so wily and cunning that even while he is cheat- ing and deceiving him, his father idolizes him. But in his very boyhood he vented upon me all the low spite and brutal tyranny of his nature. Oh! how many times I have vented my childish suffering in wild appeals for Heaven to take me away where my unknown parents had gone! Now ' “Ccomicboo ara 1%, aes oe Sony arty ics i see ey aie ati nay he eee ray Ble KS €OoO 4 3