Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

a Roanoke of Roanoke Hall. 197 indeed exchanged as infants, but my grand- mother was married to Gerald Roanoke, your father, in 1655.” “In 1655! What month?” he gasped. ‘In May,” I answered. “In May! Good heavens! A month before—” **A month before he married, or rather pretended to marry Alice Clermont, your mother. There is the proof.” “Tell me all,” he said, after he had taken the paper with shaking hands, and read it with weary eyes. “‘The facts are very simple. In May of that year he secretly married Hester Ashland. Within a week of the ceremony he came to. her in great tribulation and distress. His parents, who were at that time but ill-pro- vided for, had arranged the match with Alice Clermont, who was a very wealthy heiress. To refuse without giving any reason, he declared, was impossible; to announce the true cause would be ruin. He begged her on his knees not only to keep their marriage an unbroken secret, but to act, and to leave him free to act, as if it had never taken place.” comichbooks.com