Vashti's Fate — page 291: what you’re looking at

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

286 - CONFESSIONS. —~ I said to myself, ‘the end justifies the means,’ and I wrote that letter that brought them both home at last.” With a wild cry Vashti staggered to her feet. ‘Too late, too late?” she cried, tossing her arms wildly, and trying, with her frantic, uncertain steps, to approach her aunt. ‘‘Oh, woman, woman, why was your wisdom so tardy? Two weeks earlier would have saved us both. Ah, Father in Heaven, thy retribution is fearful!” She reeled with a dreary moan; Leon and Nora placed her again in her chair, wailing, as she smote her seared eyeballs, ‘but it 1s just—it is just !” Miss Gresham’s bowed form shook convulsively, as she said : ‘‘Tt was too late to save him—Frank, oh, Frank !” She was silent a few moments, and no one spoke, only Nora, who, lifting her aunt’s hand, kissed it passionately. She snatched it from her. ‘‘T don’t deserve it—I don’t deserve it! See, Leon, how this pure-faced girl loves the old aunt that has wrung her heart so. I wanted to try her too, Leon ; I wanted to see if the evil spirit of her race had indeed been exorcised by the Wisdom above mine.” ‘‘And what did you conclude?” Leon said, with a glance of exquisite tenderness toward the fair face that answered his glance with flushes, | ‘‘T concluded that she was as pure as the snow ; without spot or blemish on her soul. I intercepted your letters and hers, but in all that heart-ache consequent upon not hear- ing from you, she never faltered from what she considered her duty, or fell away into reproach or complaint.” Nora had leaned her forehead against the ebon-hued jamb of the fire-place at this allusion to the letters, and tears were falling at remembrance of the pain she had endured.