The Widowed Bride — page 202: what you’re looking at

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

know, dead &- THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 193 holding to the arm of the chair for support, and gasping for breath. ‘Child, who are you?” he exclaimed, his gaze fixed upon her as if she had been an apparition from another world. Alice stood mute and startled. ‘The rector hurried to his friend’s side. | Ae ote eae what is it?” he asked, eagerly. “Are you ] «Tt ig Allegra, my wife!” broke in faltering accents from the earl’s pale lips—‘‘my dead _ wife! my lost treasure! smil- ing up into my face as she smiled twenty years ago! Hskett! Eskett! don’t you see her very face?” ‘*You for get, old friend, that I never saw the first Lady Glenhampton,” said the rector of Tregarvan, soothingly. ‘Shall I go away, Mr. Eskett,” asked Alice, half-terrified; and at the sound of her voice a shudder thrilled through Lord Glenhampton’s whole frame. ‘Tell me, I say, who you are?” he exclaimed, looking at her as if he expected that the next moment she would vanish into thin air. “T am Alice,” she answered, softly. “Alice? Alice who?” “Alice Evelyn,” she made reply, with a blushing hesita tion to speak her new name. “‘No!” he cried, vehemently; ‘‘you are not Alice Evelyn —you are little Allegra, who died eighteen years ago, the little Allegra who had her mother’s eyes and her mother’s voice.” ‘““My dear friend,” interposed the startled rector, ‘‘I do not think you know what you are saying. ‘Travel and loss of sleep have worn you out. Let me take you to your room, where you can rest a little.” But the Earl of Glenhampton disregarded his imploring — appeal. ‘‘Can a man refuse to believe the evidences of his own senses?” he asked, scornfully impatient of contradiction. “But, Glenhampton, if she be, as you say, and as we all «She is not dead!” impatiently interrupted the earl, who seemed to be under the influence of some overweening con- viction which had taken possession of him, soul, brain, and heart. ‘‘Do I not tell you that she stands here, living and breathing, before me?’ comilcbooks (ele) m