Should She Have Left Him? — page 259: what you’re looking at

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

A BLOW FOR FREEDOM. 253 nothing definite was done. Under one pretext or another, delay was made by the Waldemars, father and son, until Trescotte was satisfied, though he did not say so to Hilda, that they were engaged in some intrigue. They were, but not of so deep a charac- ter as Trescotte feared. The old banker believed that Hilda could be tired out with the delay, and would finally do something which could be tortured into condonation of Hermann’s offenses. Three weeks passed in this game of delay, and then a young man, a clerk of a well-known banking house in the lower part of the city, called at the Waldemar house, asking to see Mrs. Waldemar, and refusing to communicate his business to anyone but her. When Hilda came to him he placed a packet in her hand and went away. Had the banking people whom this young clerk represented known the ends they were made to serve, they probably would have been outraged; but they didn’t. They had been requested by their London correspondent to see that the packet reached the lady’s hands and hers alone. The packet was a letter from Lord Buttontrave. That letter was fateful. Gently upbraiding her for having failed him, yet excusing her upon some suppositional discovery of their plans, he renewed the assurances of his love, declared life without her companionship held out no inducements for him, and generally expressed him- self as strong men do when they are desperately in love, that is to say, foolishly and insanely. Comicloee SS