The Widowed Bride — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 121 —it was an outlet of the Medway, not very wide, but one of those stealthy, sluggish streams where there are deep, treacherous pools that the country-side people assert to be bottomless, and our dread was that the bodies should have been canght and drawn down by the whirling current into some of those hidden and unfathomable caverns. All our © endeavors were in vain—and it was not until a fortnight afterward that the poor little corpses, so altered by the ac- tion of the water and the effects of time as to be recognizable only by their garments and the gold necklaces they had al- ways worn since their birth, were recovered some mules down, where they had probably been drifted in the disturb- ance of the current subsequently to an unusually severe storm of wind and rain, so that before the Karl of Glen- hampton—detained by the sudden illness of his wife, who gave birth to a daughter on the very day that the awful tidings of their bereavement reached Palermo, where they were staying—could arrive, his little twin girls were sleep- ing among the century dead ancestors in the family mauso- leum. I could not tell you the story of Lord Glenhamp- ton’s frantic, unreasonable grief, even were I to attempt it. Fora season it reduced him to the level of the maniacs whom we confine in solitary dungeons. Suffice it to say that he has never since held up his head.” “‘And the child born at Palermo?” ‘Was Lady Blanche Arden—a child whose grace, beauty, and affectionate disposition have failed to win for her in her father’s heart. the place her little twin sisters held. Heisa kind father, but the holiest and sweetest affection of his na- ture lhe sepulchred forever, and only the hand of the Angel of Death can roll the stone away.’ “And what became of Elson Polwheal? Did they dis- charge her?” ‘She did not wait to be discharged; she returned to her native Welsh hills, declaring frantically that she never dared to look upon her mistress’ face again. Nor did she, to my knowledge. She is living near T'regarvan now, in the house where she was born, a woman over eighty years of age, bed- ridden and helpless, and daily longing for death to come and set her free. I visit her sometimes and read to her, but I confess to an uncomfortable feeling of aversion toward her; and I sometimes think she mistrusts it. My wife can sometimes make her talk, but with me she takes refuge in (E(0) Eomicbooks