Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

THRICH WEDDED. a9 Softly, gently as a tender mother would bear her slum- bering infant upon her bosom, their bed descended through the floor, down, down—twenty, yes, thirty feet, when it was received by féur muffled figures and carefully wheeled to one side of a most gorgeous apartment, which contained every comfort and luxury that the most fastidious could de- sire; after which the trap noiselessly ascended to its place, leaving no crack or crevice by which its existence could possibly be detected! | Immediately after the four muffled forms silently glided from the room, leaving our friends to pass the remainder ol the night unmolested. sy * * K * Late the next morning Dora opened her deep-olue eyes, and with one fair hand swept aside the spotless*curtain, and gazed out into the room. | An expression of wondering admiration shone in her lovely orbs as she beheld the splendor, lighted by the many- jetted chandelier, which surrounded her, and she raised her hand as if to brush away some imaginary vision; but when she looked again the fair scene remained. With a breathless voice, and a quickly beating heart, she shook her aunt, and cried out: ‘Auntie, auntie, wake up, and tell me what this means!” “What, child—what is it?’ exclaimed the old lady, in a fright, sitting bolt upright in bed, and unable to get her — eyes open, ‘Why, this lovely room !—all these beautiful things! Everything around us is gorgeous. This is not the room we came into last night. That was plain and homely, al- though neat and clean. And—why—but this is the same bed!” “Sure enough,” said Madame Alroyd, staring about with an. amazed expression on her face. ‘‘We are either be- witched,” she continued, ‘for our room has been entered ee the night, and we borne off, bed and all, to an- other.” | ‘Oh, auntie, see what lovely pictures and statuettes— — and just look at this lovely toilet set—was there ever any- thing so exauisite!” exclaimed the impulsive girl, who had sprung from her couch, and was pattering about in her little bare feet upon an exploring expedition, and filled with ad- miration at everything she saw, €o cComicbooks