Stella Rosevelt — page 171: what you’re looking at

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

“WHY HAS HE DONE THIS THING?” 165 had lived through a century of misery—youth and happiness, joy and hope seemed to be attributes of an age so long gone by. ‘‘Why has he done this thing?” she moaned, sitting up and clasping her icy hands across her burning brow. ‘‘ Why has he deceived me thus, making a fool and a plaything of me merely to pass an idle hour? Why did he call himself Archi- bald Sherbrooke, when he is Lord Carrol, of Carrolton. Why could he not have left me alone when I was content with my music, my studies, and my simple life? Oh! why need my whole future be blighted thus? I could have gone on my way —I could have carried out my plans and gratified my ambition to become a teacher and be independent, and believed myself happy, if he had left me to myself. But now—if I could only die—if I could even go mad—any/hing to make me forget how I have allowed myself to love him, and built all my future hopes on his love for me!” The sound of gay voices and laughter came floating up to her from below as she sat there mourning her blighted life; it smote her like the stab of a knife, and she shivered from head to foot, every nerve cringing with keenest pain. In imagination she could see how Josephine was assuming her most bewitching airs to win the treacherous man who had blotted out every hope of joy from her existence, and who, per- haps, was bending over her, speaking soft and tender words, even as he had done to her only two days ago. Yesterday and the day before she had lived upon the moun- ' tain-tops—‘‘ upon the heights “—where life had seemed opening out before her like a paradise; to-night, in a single moment, she had been hurled into the very depths of misery. She got up from the floor, tottered to the window and shut it, to keep out those hateful sounds from below which nearly drove her into a frenzy; then, too weak to sit up, she crept into her bed, where she lay shaking as with an ague and moaning ‘with pain all the long night through. (COMMIE LOO LS