Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

| THRICE WEDDED, 99 did her good, though she felt as if life held no joy for her now. But she would live as happily as she could for her dear aunt's sake, who had made her life so happy the past six ears. : She passed her night of sorrow alone, and when morning came she rose up calm and proud, and pale and cold as an iceberg. Not another tear did Madame Alroyd see, not an- other sob did she hear. Dora’s heart might have been im- pregnable marble, after that first wild burst of sorrow, for any outward appearance of grief. No queen could have borne herself more proudly and coldly at the offense of some criminal, than did Dora Du- ont after she believed that she was forsaken; and her aunt being a woman of the world, exulted at thespiritshe showed, — while in her secret heart she wondered at her powers of en- durance. CHAPTER XVI. SIGNING AN AGREEMENT. Madame Alroyd and her niece were sitting quietly in their room, the morning after the reception of that fatal note. Both were trying to busy themselves about some light fancy work, to drive away the agony that was tugging so fiercely © at their heart-strings, and failing most miserably, as their white, wan faces plainly showed. Not a word was spoken about Robert’s faithlessness; only when they met that morning, madam had taken Dora ten- derly in her arms, kissed her, and murmured some loving and soothing words of fohdness, and calling her by all the pet names she had at her command. But Dora gently with- drew from her aunt’s fond embrace, with a low, ‘‘Please dun’t, auntie!’ while her face grew a shade paler, and she caught her breath convulsively. So the subject was dropped, for madam knew she could bear it better if let alone, and so she said no more, and Dora subsided into her icy calmness again. All through that day her aunt kept regarding her with wonder, for Dora had always been a creature of impulse, and now she was like a block of marble, so hard and cold; and she more than once found herself repeating these words of ‘Thomas Hood: Eomicbooks (E(@)