Thrice Lost, Thrice Won — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

76 Helen Mallory. not fall in love with him. I did not even like him, Ce be- sides-—well, besides, I was hardly twenty then, and very much in love with somebody else. But my sister Stella loved him enough for both; she was blind, and mad, and utterly infatu- ated; the sun rose when he came and sank when he went, and Monsieur. Raoul bounded the whole scheme of the universe to her. Before the end of the second month all was over; she fled from home, from kindr ed, giving up all the world for him. We never saw her again. Peter Fisher’s letter, telling us she was dead.and. buried, a year and a half after, was the first tidings of my lost sister we received. My child, if I were to talk for a century, I could never tell you how bitter the blow of that disgraceful flight was. We thought it disgraceful then—I know now that a week before ever she left her home she was his wedded wife. I know it now from his own lips— told in sorrow and remorse when too late; but he had bound her by a solemn promise to keep his seeret until he gave her leave to reveal it, and she obeyed him well. She died and — made no sign that she was a wedded wife, shamefully de- serted, and that her child had a right to bear one of the oldest and most patrician names in France. For he deserted her, Estella—eruelly, coldly deserted her—when the news came that the star of the French Empire had once more arisen, that Louis Napoleon had ascended the throne, and that the mre of De Montreuil was to shine once more in all its old uster. “The news came to bas in New York, shite he and his_- wife were starving together, and he left her alone and friend- less, penniless and ill, and went back to France, burning with einstein: | “What was the pale, sickly girl he had married and lured away from her home, that she should stand between him and the glory that was to be his under the Napoleonie dynasty ¢ He left her to live or die as she chose, and it was mercifully death. She would not return to the ent: she had left, since — the secret of her marriage was to be kept a secret still, and by the strangest of all strange elections she chose to go to old Peter Fisher. She had known him when a child—he was remotely connected with our mother’s family; she knew his address, and, sick and starving, she sought the shelter of his” wretched home—to die! “Tle took her in—you were born, and three months after he laid her beneath the clay: Then, and not till then, he wrote to us the ending of that bright young life! There was no one to receive the news but me—a miserable, lonely girl— our father and mother had followed one another to the grave, broken down, disgraced, heart-sick with sorrow and shame. My sister Stella was dead, and had left ber baby daughter | = comicbooks.co