The Widowed Bride — page 200: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 191 CHAPTER AXVIT. ELISON POLWHEAL’S DEATH-BED. For the last few years Adelbert, Earl of Glenhampton, had led a wandering and uncertain life, spending but little of his time in his own native land. The great grief of his vouth seemed to grow heavier and more poignant as the vears crept on, instead of yielding to the influence of the great enchanter Time—and there were periods when his friends almost feared for the preservation of his reason— periods of sharp, spasmodic grief, when the past seemed to become once more present, and the buried ghosts of the de- parted anguish rose up from their sepulcher, and seemed to confront him face to face. He had been spending some months in Paris, where the air seemed to agree with his broken health, and the society of a few choice friends served to keep him from too much companionship with his own meditations, and it was there that Mr. Eskett’s telegram reached him, It was short and succinct: “Come to me at once if you are alive and capable of traveling. . For Heaven’s sake, do not delay ! R. Eskstt, . _ **Yregarvan Rectory, Cardigonshire, Wales.” Lord Glenhampton read the dispatch two or three times over, as men will read such things, as if a second or third perusal could extract a hidden meaning unpreceived in the first glance. ‘‘I wonder what has happened?” he thought. ‘‘It cannot possibly be that old Elison , but, nonsense! she must be dead and buried long ago! Nevertheless I will go—if Eskett is ill or in any trouble, I should be the man of all others to be by his side!’ And so Lord Glenhampton’s valet was surprised by orders to pack a portmanteau at once for the evening train. “T am going to England,” was all the explanation he vouchsafed to give. | | The night in which they crossed the channel was dark | and tempestuous, and as Lord Glenhampton stood on deck, wrapped in his dark coat-cloak his thoughts traveled afar off into the certainties of the past, and the vague possibili- ties of the future. | co Cael payicel Xoo) <3