Vashti's Fate — page 284: what you’re looking at

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

ry i ; , =a HOPE DEFERRED. 270 her still regal head drooping a little, she came at last out of her room, and went with faltering but patient step down the halls to sit a while in the great wide doorway, with the October sun shining upon her fragile, folded fingers, and her sightless eyes. Occasionally an expression of exquisite pain crossed her thin, white face, as she turned her head involuntarily to look as some sound broke upon her ear, but she put that emotion away with a sadly patient smile, and her folded hands upon her startled heart. Nora staid always beside her when it was possible, but poverty pressed hard, and Nera was chained to duties burdensome enough in themselves because beyond her strength, but now grown doubly so because they took her from her helpless sister, She bore up bravely, however, and never dropped a repin- ing word. CHAPTER XXXII, HOPE DEFERRED. To add to Nora’s difficulties, Elise was now taken ill. - In her anxiety to relieve Nora, she had overtasked herself, and, to her indescribable dismay, found that she had only placed another burden on her hands. She kept up as long as she could, but she had to give up at last. Nora was almost disheartened at this. Strength and courage seemed as if they must fail, but she resolutely tried to keep all expression of it out of her countenance. | Philip went out to find help for her; but the well- trained servants they had dismissed months before had all found places long ere this, and he was obliged to take a cS co EOmIcboo mn .