A Final Triumph; or, A Lady Bachelor — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

cr ‘? V2 A LADY BACHELOR. shadow. When she assumed a false gayety, it was for her mother’s sake, and when she attempted to utter words of indifference, it was to lift the shadow, if possible, from off her mother’s heart. She strove to bury her sorrow, but when alone misery did its fell work. Every one knows the disagreeable sensation which at- tends uncertainty; how annoying in many ways it is when attending upon little provocations only; but there are times when it becomes a disturbing spectre which haunts its victim, and is attended with torture almost unendur- able. It was this spectre which stalked through the riven, brain of poor Eloise, under circumstances more ag- gravating and tormenting than could be provoked by any other excitement. Uncertainty permits no rest. It excites the brain to ceasless foreboding. Suspense is maddening, and poor Eloise was its victim, and to her lips there arose the un- spoken but constant inquiry: ‘* Why did he desert me?’’ There may be those who will claim that her suffering, following the mere desertion of a flirt, was not justified. Alas! there is no avenue to misery so broad as that which leads through wounded love, and it seems strange how, under these circumstances, little events occur which, like barbed arrows, lacerate the wound. Eloise was sitting on the piazza; it was a September afternoon; nature was in one of its most beneficent moods; the sun’s rays fell gently, and the air was balmy. A group of gentlemen were seated at one end of the piazza, smoking and talking, when suddenly one of them said, in @ mere incidental way: Gomichbooks (E@)