The Widowed Bride — page 219: what you’re looking at

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

210 THE WIDOWED BRIDE. to bury the past in secrecy and gloom. I told her what I had seen the morning of the inquest, but I took good care to be where she could not serve me as she had served my master. She was a brave woman, but she dared not stain her soul with another crime. Since then she has built up my fortune in every possible way, for she has been a gener- ous patroness, as you well know, mv lord—up to this time —but the last boon I asked at her hands she has seen fit to refuse, and our compact is at an end! It is not every man who would be willing to marry the daughter of a murderess, vet | would have made Lady Blanche Arden my wife, and ‘i iB that which she has denied to me within the last nour!” ‘‘And she has done well!” said Lord Glenhampton, rising to his feet, while his whole frame quivered with suppressed passion. ‘*Perjured witness, false servant, foul-tongued liar, and you dared to aspire to the hand of a noble lady like my- _ daughter! Leave the house this instant or I swear I will fling you out of yonder window as if you were a dog!” Poynings’ color changed; he shrank back, totally taken unawares. “My lord, you forget what I know—you forget what : can tell through all the length and breadth of Eng- and 1” “Tell what you please!” thundered Lord Glenhampton. ‘‘Proclaim to the world, if you choose, the foul part you have played—you cannot strike the iron into my soul any deeper than it now rankles. I, for one, will have no com-. promises with a traitorous wretch like you! Now go; I will have no word more to say to you!” Poynings, keenly disappointed in the way in which Lord _ Glenhampton had taken this frightful revelation, crept out of the blue drawing-room, his teeth tightly clenched together, and his eyes literally blazmg with fury. But he might have felt in some degree avenged, if he could have seen how quickly Lord Glenhampton’s forced fortitude gave way after he disappeared—if he could have heard the bitter groan with which the earl sank back upon the sofa, comicbooks.com |