Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

ey, 9 cea é ‘The PE of. ihe Titeen “atretched out hid big Geers _ paw, and gave one of the lean talons a grip that made the old. -. man wince. PT) marry her fast enough, and every other pretty girl - from Maine to Florida, if you like. But where’s your heiress ? - where’s. your millionaire ¢ I thought little Estella was an MG ~ orphan.” Cee Ie: E fatal within the last day or two, when a letter comes-and tells me her papa has most unexpectedly turned up. He is a French nobleman, worth a mint of money, and - Estella—when he finds her—is his heiress and only ehild.” “A marvelous tale,” said Captain Darrell; “so marvelous, ssid my old friend, that I can’t swallow. it at the. first gulp. Who is this Estella Mallory (Mallory hasn’t a very French sound, _ by the way), and how does old Peter Fisher, of Fisher’s Folly, Re ~ come to be the adopted father of French noblemen’s daugh- — ters? You'll excuse my curiosity, but if I’m to marry the young lady, it strikes me I should like to know something — of her antecedents.” “You shall know all,” said Peter Fisher. “Her mother, - Estella Mallory (yes, the girl bears her mother’s name, not her father’s), eloped at the age of eighteen with an unknown _ foreigner, her music teacher—a poor devil, with nothing but pe ~ a handsome face, a black mustache, and a high-sounding a <a -. nhame—an exile. Whether she was his wife or not did not aid z appear, and the Mallory family—proud as the—as your best - friend, Captain Darrell—were shocked and horrified, and wy seandalized beyond everything. How she spent the first year of her union with Monsieur Hautville does uot appear— -wretchedly enough, I infer, in poverty and loneliness. The __ first thing that is known of her, she turns up here—she comes to me in her misery and utter friendlessness for shelter and -suecor. I had known pretty Estella Mallory when a grace- ful girl of fifteen, and she came to me in preference to the - . ve home she had- abandoned forever. She came in poverty and sickness, and I took her in and did my best for her. But et _ that best could not save her life—she went to her grave, a _ broken-hearted woman, at the age of eighteen. In this house _ her child was born, and we named her after the mother that a dead and gone.” — : The grim old face grew a shade less grim as he told the sine aera everyday story of a woman 9 woe. Roysten Dar-- oo rell listened intently. “And monsieur—how do you call him! the gay deceiver— eure satioher was he?” fae oe “In F rance. ‘With the overthrow at the old dynasty, and : the rise of the Napoleonic star, he went back to be reinstated F iyamn Darrell, 2, cae the old title and the old estates. That was all the dying +” | auras ee Tee © ze (xo nalicale 209 CSaG@