Should She Have Left Him? — page 198: what you’re looking at

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

A NEW TANGLE. 185 lem, and might become in hers, possibly she might -have given more attention to the little one playing so unobtrusively. As it was, too much absorbed in the ideas her conference with Elsie had given birth to, she was only dimly conscious that a child—Mrs. Adams’ child—was there. ‘““You say,’ she asked suddenly, “you still love Mr. Adams?” “With all my heart.” “Yet you are separated from him.” “I could not help it.” Wooed into confidence by Dorothy’s sympathy and kindlinéss, Mrs. Adams began to tell the reason. Almost immediately she saw it involved the pater- nity of the little child—Trescotte’s child. She recoiled from telling Trescotte’s wife the fact, not because she feared for herself, but instinct informed her that it would be a lightning stroke to the one who had risked so much to remain with the man of her love, to learn that that man was the father of a child of which she was not the mother. Elsie wondered how she could have brought the child there—why the fact that she was to visit the wife of its father had not occurred to her. She up- braided herself for her thoughtlessness and became filled only with one thought, and that, to leave the house as soon as possible. ““Well, Mrs. Adams,” said Dorothy, who had been following her own thoughts, “we all of us will fear -a suit if it is to open our history to the world. And we'll hope that it will not come, but upon the con- CONMUG JOO cS (GO)