The Widowed Bride — page 205: what you’re looking at

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

196 | THE WIDOWED BRIDE. : And what brings ye here, Lord Adelbert Glenhampton?” she asked, speaking slowly and in hollow tones. ‘Are ye come to hold back my spirit from the other world? I knew it would be so—I knew you would come and stand at my bedside when the call came—for all these weary days and nights my soul has gone out into the great gulf of darkness seeking yours. I could not die with the black secret on my soull” she added, shuddering. ‘‘I’ve been a true and a leal servant to Lady Edith all these years. I could live on and hold my tongue for her sake were it a hundred years more, but I could not die with a lie on my lips.” ‘Shall I tell you what the secret is, Klison Polwheal?” asked Lord Glenhampton, his deep tones searching her dulled senses with distinct accents. ‘You do not know it! You never knew it!” she uttered, vehemently. ‘‘I swore with my hand on the Bible never to weal. ite ‘““Nevertheless I know it!” he answered. ‘‘My little babes | were not drowned in the Medway—it is not they who lie confined in the mausoleum at Glenhampton.” _ €Who has told you this?” she gasped. He beckoned to Alice to approach. She advanced, with a look of awe upon her lovely young face, and bent- her eyes seriously on Elison Polwheal’s ghastly face. ‘One of them stands before you now,” said Lord Glen- hampton. ‘‘I knew her when I saw her, from her wonder- ful likeness to her buried mother.” ‘sAnd it is to me that she owes her life,” said Klison, her restless fingers working ceaselessly at the coverlid on which they lay. ‘‘Let them go away, Lord Glenhampton, and I will tell you all—the Lord be praised that my guilty con- science can be lightened of its load, even though it be at the eleventh hour!” Mr. Eskett motioned Hester Jones and Alice Evelyn to withdraw, himself remaining by the window beyond Elison’s vision, at a signal from the earl—and the dying woman commenced her story of treachery and wrong, in a tone that had grown low and hoarse: | “Tt was all planned, my lord, before you went with her to Italy. Ever since there was the likelihood of a child bein’ born to her she grudged the little things the ground they trod on, the clothes they wore, the very air they breathed—it was all somethin’ taken away from her own ‘omicbooks = os - LV (eo) ne ail -_ ‘ 3 =. 5 et ~*~ - = aa