The Widowed Bride — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

194 THE WIDOWED BRIDE. “She lies buried at Glenhampton,” soothingly interposed the rector. At this juncture the opposite door was opened, and the servant looked apprehensively in. “I beg your parding for a interruptin’ of you, Mr. Es- kett, but Hester Jones has just come down from that old woman Polwheal’s; and, please sir, they don’t think as she can last much longer. It’s her own belief as she’s goin’ out with the tide, sir, at sunset; and Hester thinks she hadn’t ought to be left to die withouten so much as a prayer said — over her.” | ‘Is it Elison Polwheal?” asked Lord Glenhampton, turn- ing to the rector. Mr. Eskett nodded assent. ‘The finger of Providence is in this thing,” said the earl in a low, tremulous voice. ‘We will both go to Elison Polwheal. If there is a key to this mystery she possesses it, ot aru apie Allegra, my little Allegra, you will come with us?” He took her hand as he spoke and drew her toward him. The tenderly spoken name sounded strangely sweet in her ears, bewildered though they were by the strange occur- rences of the moment. | ““Yes,”’ she answered, although her heart beat a pulse or two more rapidly than usual, and she could not help wishing that Ernest had returned from his trout-fishing expedition among the hills, for her to lean upon -his counsel and advice. “T will go with you, sir.” “Is it far?” Lord Glenhampton asked of the rector. «Several miles, but the little wagon is at the door. Iwas going to the village this afternoon.” The cottage, or rather hut, where old Elison Polwheal lay dying was a rude structure of mud and stone, with a steep — thatched roof and an immense stone chimney, into which the swallows darted ever and anon, seeming to lose them- selves in its yawning depths. Hester Jones, that old woman’s granddaughter, who had come across the fields by a short cut, had reached the cot- tage before them, and now stood courtesying in the door- way. «She's a bit better, gentlemen,” she said, as she made way for them to enter, “‘but it’s the death-stroke is on her. Please to sit down, gentlemen, and Mrs. Evelyn; it’s a mor- comicbooks.co