Roxy Hastings — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

4 ROXY HASTINGS. “'No,-no, Laura, I do not know it.” “Well, we do, or we think so, and we make allowances accordingly. At any rate, as he is absent and in the army, your anxiety for him is natural, and if it has made you a little unjust to Charley, he overlooks it, as I believe he does everybody’s faults but his own.” — “He is a good boy and a dutiful son. Heaven’s bounties could not descend upon one more worthy. Can you make any guess at this wonderful secret of his?” ‘Not the least, and I don’t mean to try. Let us enjoy our new prosperity without looking too closely into its source. Charles is all truth, and lam willing to take his word that allis right. Butitis wonderful, and I should not be surprised if it turned out that he was worth as much as twenty thousand dollars.” “Oh, no, Laura, not as much as that. How could it be possible ?” | CHAPTER X. LUKE. Alfred Lee had more than one reason for going into the army. He was a young man of most ardent temperament, and _ at the time of his father’s retirement from business, solvent but poor, he was deeply in love with a young lady (a daughter of a wealthy merchant), who was every way worthy of his affection, and who returned it. Lucy Holden, like Roxana Hastings, was a blonde, whose golden hair fell in tresses upon the whitest of necks; but, unlike her, she was tall, and her face, without being as faultlessly beautiful as Roxy’s, had more of an intellectual expression. Alfred and Lucy were not engaged, but the intimacy which precedes engagement had been so open and so un- opposed by Miss Holden’s parents, that Alfred had never entertained a doubt of the successful issue of his suit up to the very hour when he proposed for his beloved Lucy, with all the confidence of a long encouraged lover. It was true that for a week or two preceding this event those dreadful weeks in which his father’s misfortunes had culminated, he had noticed a change in the deportment of Mr. Mark Holden toward himself—a growing coldness of manner which ought to have warned him of impending danger, Eomicbooks (ele)