A Final Triumph; or, A Lady Bachelor — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

UNCERTAINTY. G1 the truth might be revealed too late, and that, lacking its natural stimulus, the tender physical organization might succumb. In plain language, he feared the blow might kill the poor girl who had _ been so cruelly stricken. His pity was aroused. Almost continually he beheld Eloise exposed to stinging thrusts at every turn; her equivocal position invited them. Her friends who had witnessed the attentions which she had received, and knowing nothing of their singular termination, naturally assumed an entirely different state of affairs. Occasional remarks, spoken in playful banter and without malice, struck deep; and here becomes apparent one of the cruel penalties she was called upon to endure. . Laurence wished he had hers or her mother’s confidence; he felt that a presentation of his own conclusions would serve as a partial explanation of his friend’s conduct, and would proportionately lessen the humiliation; but, alas! there was interposed the barrier of natural delicacy; he might cross it, but could not expect a proud and sensitive girl to do so; and even the alleviations which his conclu- sions might present were denied her. And Eloise—how trying was the task that had been imposed upon her! I6 was not from the world alone that she felt called upon to hide her misery. She was not suffering alone; her tender and ever-watchful mother suffered with her in a different way. The blow was as heavy upon the mother as upon the child; all her hopes of the future were centered in her daughter, and when she suffered, the mother suffered also. This Eloise knew, and it was this knowledge that in- spired her efforts to bear up and to try to throw off the OPMICG LOOKS (EO)