Weaker than a Woman — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

a WEAKER THAN A WOMAN. herself what she was doing when she deliberately resolved to break her plighted word—to give up her lover and marry Sir Owen. Her temptations had been many and great—they had been continual, they had been hard to resist; but that was no excuse. She knew that she was committing a double sin; she was proving false to the one man whom she really loved to marry one whom she did not love at all. “It is a double sin,” she said to herself, “ but I cannot help it—I could not go througha life of drudgery and poverty. Felix will hate me, but in after years he will know that my decision was wise.” So she thought and mused, dreaming in the sweet shade of the summer woods of the gorgeous future that would be hers if she married Sir Owen. Presently her mood changed and her eyes filled with passionate tears as she thought of Helix. ‘“T love Felix!” she cried. ‘“ Why can he not have Gars- wood? Why must he be poor and obscure while Owen Chevenix revels in wealth? It is not fair.” She had love and wealth both before her, yet she had de- hberately given up love and had chosen wealth. She made no effort to justify herself in her own eyes. “Those diamonds were too much for me,” she said. “I cannot help it if I am not noble by nature. ” Yet, when she had left the woods, and walked home through the meadows, something was gone from the sun- hght, something from the song of the birds, which was never to be there again for her. She walked as one over whom a shadow lies. She had joined hands with sin—and sin is never a cheerful companion. The flowers and the trees, the color of the grass, had lost their charms for her —there was a dark shade over everything. i “Will it always be like this?” she thought. “If itis, l shall not find my future very bright.” Then the girl’s heart misgave her. As she looked around everything reminded her of Felix. She had walked with him down those groves, she had lingered with him by that stile and under those trees; he had been so much part of her life that she could not picture life without him. ‘How shall I live without him?” she said. ‘‘ How shall I spend the days, the years without him?’ Then she tried to harden her heart. ‘People cannot live on love and poetry,” she told herself; “if they could all would be well.” That same evening she said to Mrs. Haye: | “Mamma, I have been thinking it will be better for Felix ‘comicbooks.com —