Vashti's Fate — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

154 AT HOME. ful horror of imagery and surroundings. It frightened her sometimes till it seemed to her she must die. Rising with a sudden impulse of her inward thought, she took the lamp from a side-table, and holding it aloft, so as to throw its light as much as possible on the picture over the mantel- piece, she looked long and earnestly at that dark, handsome face with its heavy-lashed eyes. She often studied this pic- ture thus, and she was beginning to understand what was the hidden language it spoke—and every time she lifted her gaze to that gaze, her heart thrilled with deeper sympathy to the nameless, but unutterable pain, that darkened there. ‘“Poor papa, she murmured to herself, ‘‘he knew, of course he knew, how,sad it must be to live so long as he did, knowing what it must come to at last. I wonder if God won't let me die young? It seems to me it would be a great deal better so. I wonder if papa wily glad to die. If he had lived much longer, perhaps She looked wildly at the picture, shudders set the lamp down with a trembling hand, and flung herself with a dreary moan upon the floor. There was a noise in the great hall soon after, subdued tones of greeting, the sound of approaching footsteps, none of which pierced to her numbed ears with any realizing sense, and then the door of the sitting-room fell open, and Vashti Everleigh came in, saying, as she crossed the threshold, to the servant who accompanied her: ‘‘Don’t tell anybody I’ve come, Elise.” Elise bowed and closed the door after her. At the first tones of her sister’s voice Nora had started from the floor, wondering if she were not dreaming. Vashti came slowly toward her, loosening and throwing back her hood, holding out hand, with a feeble smile that a - - — ; wd we G -~ . : oo? > * a” ae a - st - Ae Ss Pr a,7 eae : its ee ay wal i a 4 a fp € oF # “ye te =