Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

12 (te eee Sr Peter Fisher watched him out of the room, with a grim glance, and heard the house door close after him with a bang that made him wince. “The devil take him!” muttered the old man. “He'll smash every hinge in the house if he comes here often, If there were any other way—but there is not, and she must marry him. After all, a divorce will set everything right again. I will have feathered my nest, and, away in France, who will be the wiser? It must be. I'll break it to her at once.’ He seized a hand- bell on the table and rang a vigorous peal. The summons was answered by a gaunt old woman, as grim and wrinkled and withered as her master. “Send Estella Mallory to me, Judith,” her master said. “Tell her to come at once.’ The gaunt domestic departed oka a word, and Peter | Fisher sat staring nervously into the smoky fire. Outside the rain beat, and the wind blew, and the dusk of the dismal spring day already darkened the dismal room. The old man shivered as the shrill gale whistled round the lonely gables. “After all,” he muttered, “she ought to be vial to. get away from ‘this erewsome place—glad of anything for a ehange. Royston Darrell’s a handsome fellow, and girls all like to be married. I hope she won’t object. I don’t want to use force. There’s a look of her dead mother in her big brown eyes sometimes that Oh, here she comes!” CHAPTER IL ESTELLA. There was the quick patterine of light feet down the long, steep stairs—the last three cleared with a jump—then the door flew open, and Peter Fisher’s ward stood, brightly smil- ing, on the threshold. The fire leaped up as she entered, as if brightened by her bright presence, and lit the dusky room. The old man shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked furtively at her, thinking, in spite of himself, what a contrast she was to his late vis- itor—to the gigantic captain of the Raven, and his gaunt, grim, old housekeeper. She stood before him—a tall, slender’ damsel, with a pale, rather thin face, and the evident consciousness of hav- ing too many arms, which it is in the nature sixteen Omick co nm