The Price He Paid — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

56 LIVING IN REBELLION. Why, at least, did he not write to her? The young girl was too childish and inexperienced to do justice to that feeling of delicate consideration which made her lover shrink from anything likely to cast the least shadow on her, which made him endure silence and separation rather than venture on any step that might imperil her good name. “Well, Gabrielle, are you trying to fathom the secrets of the Nixies’ Well?” said a voice, sud- denly. She looked quickly round. Baron von Raven stood before her—he must just have stepped out from among the bushes. — “Well, Uncle Arno, I should think you ought to be better acauainted with the secrets than I am,” retorted Gabrielle, laughing. “I am stilla stranger ” the land, and you have lived at the castle ever so ong.” “Do you think I have had time to listen to these - nursery tales?” | | | The contemptuous tone in which he spoke jarred on the girl, she hardly knew why. “Did you never care for such nursery-tales, even as a boy?” “Not evenasa boy. I had something better to think of even then.” Gabrieile looked up at him. That proud, stern face, with its expression of somber earnest, cer- tainly did not give the idea that its owner could itp aoky known or cared for the fairy world of youth. “Nevertheless, my visit to-day is to the Nixies’ Well,” he went on. “I have given orders to have the fountain pulled down and the spring stopped; but I waited to see first how it was likely to affect the ground, and what precautions should be taken.” : Gabrielle turned upon him in alarm and indigna- ¢ ion. . “The fountain is to be destroyed? Why?” “Because lam tired at length of all the folly connected withit. The absurd superstition is not to be uprooted. In spite of my strict orders to the contrary, water is constantly being fetched from Eomichbooks.com