Out of the Past — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

Out of the Past. 65 the ghost of failure and penury at her feast, had fled from it to the board of wealth and ease, gained at little cost. With her there was always a something different from the rest, which lent her greater success—an indefinable reserve which clung to her from the air of her mountain childhood. It showed itself in an untamable indepen- dence which threatened at times to fling her from the heights of success, only to raise her giddily beyond them still higher up. There was no doubt that she could retain that hotel so long as she wished. But how long would that be? There were bets upon it. Saline had been showing dis- quieting symptoms of late which were anxiously watched by those who tried to imitate her and who could not think complacently of foregoing the supper at her hotel. She treated M. Vignaud with almost open contempt and M. Vignaud would surely resent it in time. Saline had contracted the ill habit of day-dreaming, and she re- turned in her day-dreams to the mental attitude of her young life, free among the mountains and pure as its air. Whether her day-dreams had come before or after hav- ing seen Robert Dinsmore at opera rehearsals, she neither knew nor cared. She saw in him a man fit to love a woman and to keep his love as something to be neither CONNICLOOOKS.