Vashti's Fate — page 290: what you’re looking at

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

: CONFESSIONS. . 4 i-—— 285 > Miss Margery hesitated an instant, and then coming nearer, said, with a half defiant manner: ‘“T may as well tell it now as any time, I suppose. The Everleighs are just as rich to-day as they ever were ; there was only a mere fraction of their money in that bank. Don't look at me that way, Leon; I have told nothing but the truth. I never pretended they were poor, though I meant to make them think so. I wrote Vashti and Frank that the bank was broken, and I guessed they would have to come home. They inferred the rest. I sent the ser- vants off, true; but it was at Nora's suggestion. I never said anything more to her than that the bank was. broken, though I meant she should think just as she did, that they had become poor.” Vashti grew a shade paler at this announcement—it called up most painful recollections; and Nora with a be- wildered air crossed the hearth, and, with her hand on her aunt’s arm, said: ‘‘Aunt Margery, what did you do so for?” She shook her-hand from her arm, with the same ex- pression of hard defiance, and, addressing herself still to Leon, said : ‘Tt has been all that I have lived for these sixteen years Vashti grew up to tell me—ay, and to prove it to me—that I had made a terrible mistake. I did—lI did, Heaven forgive me! You would have thought that would have cured me of experimenting, wouldn't you? But it didn’t. When I knew that the proud, beautiful girl that I loved as my own life had sought the whirl of fashionable life for the same purpose that the suicide seeks the river bank-—when I - knew that Frank was gambling, and drinking, and _ horse- tracing with the same bitter, self-destructive end in view, —to save these children from their father’s fate. (eco) mn (G 300 cS CO m