Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

Ve THRIUB WEDDED. No, no, certainly not, my little miss,” and he laughed disagreeably again. | «You stay here a few minutes while I go and make out a certificate—for, luckily, I happen to be clerk as well as jus- ticee—-and then T’ll come back and perform the ceremony, ahd you shall be truly Mrs. Robert Ellerton before you go ~ home.” So saying the squire strode with hasty steps toward his elegant mansion, where, once within his library, he gave free vent to his pent-up feelings. With clenched hands and wrinkled brow he paced back and forth the spacious length of that great room, cursing, bitterly cursing, and muttering to himseif : ‘Oh, Robert Ellerton,” he said, ‘‘I have you now; I can now pay you twice told for all my weary years of woe and anguish. Yon shall moan and weep, and gnash your teeth, even as I have done. Your false pride shall have a blow from which it will never recover. _I remember you too well to know how it would gall you to have your son marry a poor girl, and under such circumstances, too. And he—he too, will chafe in the future at the chain that binds him. I know how you have built proud castles in the air for him, even as you used to for yourself, but they shall all tumble about your ears in confusion. It isin my power to crush you now, and, curse you, I will doit! Oh, Jessie, my poor - blossom, had you but given yourself to me, how bright — would I have made your life! I would have held you close close to this beating heart, and it should have given you oe life. My life has been, and is, like the dregs of the wine- _eup, sour and bitter, but you could have made it sweet and ' fragrant as burning incense. But now there is nothing left _ but revenge, and—I will take it! Oh, how I hate you, _._ blighter of my happiness! I curse you! and I will crush _ you and yours if I can.” — | : _._It wasa fearful passion that moved him. One moment of intense hatred and anger toward one whom he imagined had _ wrecked his life. The next full of tenderness and sorrow E» for the one loved and lost sweetness of his existence. It was - along pent-up agony flowing afresh over his soul, a wound __ long since healed and. scarred over now torn rudely open, tet ot sd hair, he beat his breast, as he strode wildly back and forth, « 7 a é _ and pouring forth his inmost heart’s blood. He tore his “4 , Sys" bt pe ‘ ~ na ecomicDOoKs.com Cathe "| Phe Oe Lae we “ett: ira Saas on nist -