Vashti's Fate — page 285: what you’re looking at

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

280 HOPE DEFERRED. young, ignorant, inexperienced girl, who was likely to be more trouble than profit, judging from appearances, Margery Gresham had grown old and wrinkled, pinched, thin, and bent in these last two years; but since this sad change had come upon Vashti she had become incompre- hensible and strange. She would stand and watch Nora patiently toiling through difficulties enough to daunt the owner of a stouter pair of hands than hers, and then burst- ing in upon her with an impetuosity very unusual, would take the girl's pale face between her palms, and, searching it with her sharp, sunken eyes, would nod and mutter to herself, ‘‘Good girl—brave girl, reward sure,” etc. Nora had another trouble hid away in her heart, as bur- densome as any she had felt. It was six years since she had seen her friend, Leon Brownlee. He had written often—his own brave, out- spoken, tender letters; for he had never forgotten the shy, sweet child that had so interested him, and he had got such a hold of her loving, grateful heart as neither time nor absence could ever loosen. Through all these six years gone she had looked forward to his return with inexpres- sible longing. But nowit had been more than twice as long as ever before since she had heard from him, and, with the remembrance fresh upon her tortured mind of that shipwreck in which the idol of Vashti’s passionate heart had gone down, she could think of nothing else but the great wave-lashed ocean that perhaps covered him—her friend, her brother. Her lips grew white at the bare thought. As October advanced, and merged itself in stormy November, this un- certainty of doubt and anguish grew almost unbearable, and she watched the papers, as it was thence Vashti had de- rived her evil tidings. comic