Stella Rosevelt — page 363: what you’re looking at

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

“TT HAVE BEEN MAD,” 357 She was trembling like a leaf, and he saw that she was ter- ribly excited, while the piteous tone in which she had just spoken went directly to his kind heart. He took her hand and drew it under his arm, | ‘¢Vou are nervous,” he said, kindly. ‘‘Come and walk with me afew moments until you are calmer—the night is almost like summer—then I will take you back to the company.” His tone was so sympathizing, his touch on her arm so gentle, while it thrilled every fiber of her body, that it was more than she could bear. She was going to-morrow, and this man whom she loved with a passion almost amounting to idolatry, would be beyond her reach. She would not meet him again for months, perhaps never, and this thought, added to her other pain, broke her down completely. She grasped his arm with both her white hands, her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s, there was a choking sensa- tion in her throat, and bowing her graceful head upon her clasped and trembling hands, she burst into a fresh fit of weep- ing, which was like a tempest. The young lord found himself in a very awkward position, — Those shaking hands, that bowed head lying so near his heart, that lithe, quivering form, those tears and sobs, told him but too plainly what caused this deep emotion. ‘‘ Miss Richards—Josephine,” he said, unwittingly using her first name in his embarrassment, ‘‘let me take youin. You will make yourself ill, What can_I do for you?” But she could not control herself. She had abandoned her- self too entirely now to her passion to conquer it readily, and she sobbed on, conscious only of how she loved him, and that she was near him. Oh! if he could but have returned her love, she would gladly have given the best years of her life. ‘here was no EONMIEOOOKS (E(0)