Roxy Hastings — page 212: what you’re looking at

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

ROXY HASTINGS. 203 make me tell it over and over? If you had let me alone I shouldn’t have done it; you said that she’d jump at the chance of getting me.” “I thought so because I knew your worth, Isaac, and I thought she was amiable, and—” | “You thought she was a fool.” ‘Yes, so I did,” answered Elvira, laughing. ‘Well, she ain’t, so let that be the end of it. I never want to hear her name again.” “Tut, tut; just as like as not she’ll change her mind yet.” “No, she won’t. You wouldn’t think so if you had seen her to-night. She looked like a judge senteneing a prisoner, and I felt as if I had been committing petit lar- ceny. You might have knocked me down with a feather. Ill never offer myself to another woman if I should live to be as old as Methuselah.” Isaac “ took it hard.” CHAPTER XXXIX. “AS ONE RISEN FROM THE DEAD.” Alfred Lee’s grief had seemed so much modified during the latter part of Miss Hastings’ visit, and for several weeks after her departure, that his friends really believed he had formed an attachment for her which would be avowed when the fitting time had elapsed which was re- quired by a due respect for the memory of Lucy. He always asked to see Roxana’s letters, and once, at Laura’s request, he had put a postscript in one of her re- plies, in which, to his mother’s great delight, he told her that he looked forward with pleasure to her promised visit in the spring. But before spring came Alfred was as dejected as ever, and though he tried hard to keep up a show of spirits, it was too evident that both his bodily and mental health were failing. ‘‘He will be better again when Roxy comes,” his mother would say; ‘‘she amuses him at least, and by and by it will turn out as we wish. Itis impossible that it should be otherwise.” : Charles thought so, too, though he did not look very happy over it. “He can’t help it,” he said, thoughtfully. ‘Nobody could. She’s‘such a love.” (E(0) Eomicbhboo cS m