The Widowed Bride — page 210: what you’re looking at

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

Pi " Wiley J Le ee ; hy ar | ’ ee | fy THE WIDOWED BRIDE 201 sunshine flowed radiantly in, making the huge room look even more desolate than it did before, and Rena could see that the angles were filled with useless lumber, such as col- lects in every house—broken chairs, rolls of carpeting, pic- tures with their faces turned toward the wall, and heaps of books and papers, while broken china dragons grinned at her from the tall chimney-piece, and she had nearly stum- bled over the canopy of a broken state-chair, whose velvet- cushioned back lay on the floor, a forgotten thing of the — past. ‘‘Dear me! dear me!” said Mrs. Wadesleigh, ‘‘if these books ain’t well-nigh ruinationed by the rats and mice!” She lifted up one or two as she spoke, and turned over their benibbled leaves with a piteous air of deprecation. “They are of no consequence,” said Antonia, absently. *“‘I beg your pardon, Miss Clive, for contradictin’ of you, but books is books,” said the housekeeper, dogmatically; ‘and I never could abare to see ’em go to destruction. And the moth isin the tapestry too, as I live, and a big ’old heaten out of the side of King Belshazzar’s nose. Dear me! dear me!” | Mrs. Wadesleigh lifted the folds and shook them out with a reverent hand, while Rena stooped to examine a carved work-box or cabinet, on antiquely fashioned feet, which had been concealed by a heavy fringe of ‘“‘King Belshazzar’s Feast,”—the evident subject of the piece of tapestry, as Mrs. Wadesleigh knew by tradition, and Rena by conjec- ture. , . ‘(What curious old Japanese toy is this?” she asked, mov- ing it forward. ‘‘It is lke a yellow bone, all carved with black carvings like lace work!” Mrs. Wadesleigh dropped King Belshazzar thereby filling | the air with fine ashes—like dust. ‘“Yellow bone!” she cried, superciliously. ‘‘Why, it’s the finest of hivory, as King Solomon’s ships used to bring over, with hasses and peacocks—and where it’s been all ~ these years, I, for one, can’t pretend to say. Why, Miss Percival, that work-box belonged to Lady Glenhampton when she was Mrs. Evelyn, twenty-two good years ago!” ‘‘May I look at it?’ asked Rena. © : ‘'There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” said Mrs, Wade- sleigh, and Rena lifted the lid. : he interior was as quaint as the outside. There were “> mn GCOmMmIcbooks.co