A Parisian Romance — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

40 A PARISIAN ROMANCE. she burst into a horrible mirthless laugh, which made both her listeners shiver. “There, there!” she said. “I don’t know what I am saying. It is so sudden, Henri, you know—so sudden—so sudden.” As she spoke, she caught up her heavy train in one hand, and waving the other vacantly, she tot- tered, rather than walked, from the study, and in another moment, the door of her own apartment, across the hall, was heard to close. “Poor woman! Poor woman!” said the doctor, “she is completely unstrung. There is no cause for anxiety, my boy; itis but natural that it should be so. The shock has proved too much for her.” All that evening, as Henri sat by the bedside of his father, who had again lapsed into unconscious- ness, his brain was like a kaleidoscope, in the con- stant shifting of his thoughts from one thing to another. His love for Marcelle, her acceptance of that love, Madame Charteris’ consent, the Baron Chevrial and his newly made bride, his father’s sudden seizure, all these things crossed and re- crossed each other ina sort of fantastical dance through his wearied head; but the thing that troubled him the most and to which he returned sagain and again, without obtaining any satisfac- tory solution was his mother’s strange behavior. It was impossible that his father’s sudden seizure could be the cause of it; she had long ceased to feel any affection for him, and, although, as the doctor Eomicbooks..co