Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 198: what you’re looking at

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

" M@HRICE WEDDED. pes | brother returned from abroad, bringing our boy with him, _ saying he had found you in Naples, where, dying, you left Ralph to his care. ‘These were the facts which I gathered from the man. I immediately closed up my affairs and started for home, nearly heart-broken at the loss of you, and the knowledge of what you must have suffered, believing me false, and re-- ‘ solving to claim my boy, and bring to justice the villain who had thus heartlessly plotted our ruin. ‘‘T realized at once why he had done this wicked thing— that he was resolved to destroy the whole family of Hller- tons (even to the sacrificing of his only sister), because one of them had married the girl he loved. ‘The day I arrived in , | went directly to Squire Moulton’s house. I was passing up the avenue, with bitter and revengful thoughts in my heart, when I heard voices within a sort of arbor near by. I stopped to listen, and glancing between the branches I saw you (oh, how it makes my heart ache even now to think of it!) in soiled and tattered garments, pleading with your brother to take you to his heart again, and to give you your child. | _ **T knew you at once by your voice, and by the haughty _ grace with which you lifted your head when he called you - a beggar, and you answered: | “<<T am no beggar!’ “‘T nearly betrayed myself then, for I was about rushing forward to clasp you in my arms, when I remembered that you would not know me, for I had disguised myself so that your brother should not recognize me until I had sounded _ him, and found out where my boy was. So I resolved to listen to what passed between you. I crouched among the bushes, and there remained until you fled from the place; then, when the heartless man followed, I showed myself, and half cajoled, half threatened him, into hiring me to steal those pictures from you. ‘‘He engaged me, and I immediately followed you, saw you when you fainted, picked you up, took you into a cab, and while we were being driven to a house where I knew you would find kind attention, | took the locket from your bosom, leaving a fifty-dollar bill in its place, together with a few words, telling you to go to the post-office in a fortnight. “Oh! how I longed to wait until you revived, and tell <S (ele) rare | 3 ae comicboo =~.