Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 244: what you’re looking at

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

234 — OCTAVIA’S PRIDE. the river before another morning, as such a ship had been seen from below that morning too far off for her private signals to be made out. But it was the Comet, beyond ques- tioning. ; | ‘“T’ll go down to see my Lady Mary early in the morn- ing,” said Mathew Merle, ‘‘and [ll have plenty of cash on hand when I meet George.” | CHAPTER XX/V. shed WA NACH RAS PG! ak OB Rented BUY ed WAS cH 0 Lord Ronald Falkner was floating on the sparkling wave of a lover’s rapturous bliss, and was too happy himself to notice the haggard face of his uncle’s newly chosen Aus- tralian agent, or even to be aware that his mother was thinner, and whiter, and weaker than on their first arrival. The rose-colored cloud floating around him hid the little signs of gathering gloom in the demeanor of his friends. But when Octavia showed nervous and. restless symptoms, and was fitful and capricious in her gay moods, he roused himself to search for the cause, alarmed for the health of her body, and never suspecting what Felix Thorne knew very well, that it was the mind which was diseased. He called in Sir James, one day, by what he deemed a very skillful stroke of diplomacy, and appealed to him for a con- firmation of his theory, that his beautiful betrothed was wearing out her strength in persisting to follow up the reck- less gayety of the party at Chichester Rookery. Octavia was present, and could not escape the physician’s scrutiny. She was deeply annoyed, but tried to smother the feeling, and yielded her wrist to the examination of Sir James, the indignant blood leaping angrily through her veins, as she said to herself: S comicbooks, SS yrenee = Sa ——