Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

72 Helen Mallory. “What you thought five minutes ago,” burst out Norah, in- dignantly—“that it is lies from beginning to end! That girl a wife! that girl a poisoner! The wicked old slanderer! I wish I had Peter Fisher here, and my ten finger-nails sunk in his face!” “Hush!” said her mistress, starting up. “You have awak- ened her!” ~ She hurried to the bed; she had heard a stifled sob. Estella lay, her face hidden in her hands, crying as she had never cried before in her life. “Oh, my dear! my. dear!” exclaimed Miss Mallory, in deep- est distress, “I never meant you to hear. I thought you were asleep. My child, my child, don’t weep so! We don’t be- lieve one word of this bad, cruel, lying letter.” The girl looked up, her sobs ceasing sudden and the sad brown eyes gazed full into the face bending above her. What. a kind face it was—so full, so patient, so sweet! “And yet it is true,” she ‘said, slowly. They were the first words she had spoken. Helen Mallory recoiled 1 in alarm. Tre! 179 “In the letter, not in the siret { may be married to Roy- ten Darrell for what I know. I may have almost poisoned him. I only know I never meant 1t.” Miss M allory stood. gazing upon her, shocked, bewildered. “Married without knowing 1+! Guilty of poisoning with- out meaning it! My child, I don’t understand you at all.” “No,” said Estella, mournfully. “How should you? I hardly understand it myself. Dear lady, sit down beside me, and let me tell you all.. 1 would have told you the day I came ~ if I had been able. But I was ill, was I not?’ | "Very ill, my poor child—hke to die. But that 1 is all past now.’ “Ah! better for me perhaps if IT had. How lous’ is it ago?” “Over two weeks. You have had a fever, and been de- lirious nearly all the time. You are very weak still, and must not talk too much.” : “Dear lady, it will not hurt me. IJ will never be at rest again until you know all my sad, miserable story. I am a very, very unfortunate girl. As you said a little while ago, I have suffered as few girls of my age ever suftered before. Mr. Fisher has been 80 merciless to me that I don’t think I can ever forgive him.” “T never knew him when he was anything else,” said Helen Mallory. “I only wonder—miser that he is—he has bur- dened himself with you so long. I wrote to him repeatedly to send you to me; but, out of pure contrariness, 1 suppose, he always refused. And he forced you into marry LI this micbooks.co