Weaker than a Woman — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

Y Fl Drs te < - — ; 149 WEAKER THAN A WOMAN. asked; and he told her. It was one of his great merits that he never spoke a false or evasive word. On that same night Lady Chevenix sat with her husband in a first-class railway carriage on the road to Paris. They were to spend their honey-moon there, and they had left Dover by that night’s steamer. As the night grew darker and the red lights of the signals passed more quickly, she fell into a deep, troubled slumber. Her husband looked with exulting pride at the marvelous face with its exquis, ite beauty; he was glad that she slept—it would rest her- and would help to while the hours away. He tried to sleep, but it was impossible. He was exultant, triumphant ; he had won the only thing wanting to complete the happi- ness of his life. His heart hungered as he looked at the graceful figure of his wife. He noted with pride and pleas- ure how the handsome traveling-dress became her sweet loveliness. The folly of that lawyer to imagine that such a woman as this was born to live in a place like Lilford. His year’s income would not find her 9, decent dress. He will recog- nize his mistake when he sees Lady Chevenix.” it was strange that no feeling of pity for his rival or remorse for his own behavior crossed his mind. He did not seem even to understand that he had done a dishonorable thing. He had outwitted another man, and he was de- lighted. Then he saw the face that he was watching grow paler in sleep. Suddenly his young wife awoke with a loud cry. He saw her look at both her hands, while her white lips trembled. “What is it, Violet?” he asked. ‘“A dream,” she replied, shuddering, ‘‘only a dream.” ‘“Very horrid things they are, too, sometimes,” he said. “What did you dream” ? She was still looking at her hands, rubbing the softly- | tinted gloves as though she would fain rub something from them. She was too confused to be quick at invention. ‘“What did you dream?” he repeated, and there was a certain sharpness in his voice. ‘I thought that I held a human heart in my hand, and that it was bleeding,” she replied. ‘That would do for a sensation novel, Violet,” he said, laughing. ‘‘You have something better than a heart in your hand—you have a diamond ring on your finger worth two hundred pounds, and you have a wedding-ring that makes you Lady Chevenix. Go to sleep again, but dream comicbooks.col