A Final Triumph; or, A Lady Bachelor — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

92 | A LADY BACHELOR. member, thirteen or fourteen years ago, when she first made her entrée in society.. She had high ideas then, but now—well, well, it’s sad to think her hook is still in the pond, and she hasn’t caught her fish yet!’’ The comments did not count; it was the misstatement of fact that Eloise was three-and-thirty, according to this vulture’s declaration, and had entered society thirteen or fourteen years previously. And it had been made to ap- | pear that she had been imposing herself upon the young ladies in the hotel. It was following this announcement that the young people gathered in groups, and in whispers declared their horror at her impertinence. ‘Time had dealt. kindly with her; no one would pronounce her a day over five-and-twenty, save on evidence. ‘There were in the house a dozen girls who were under five-and-twenty who looked older; there were others who successfully concealed: their real ages, who looked several years her senior. But the latter had not been found out; there had come no vulture to croak from her beak the frosting truth; and they, with the others, reveled in disdain. What I heard and observed I will tell. The eagle-faced woman, eight years previously, had made her first trip from her magnificent home, ‘hich, within the year, had, as I learned, succeeded the two-story house in which her two daughters were born. Her hus- band, however, had made a financial hit; he had been a cartman, and by thrift added several horses to his stock and became a boss carman. A speculative adventurer in- duced him to advance a thousand, which he drew from the savings bank and put in a speculation. The venture: Gomichbooks (EC)