The Widowed Bride — page 227: what you’re looking at

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

Oy eae THE WIDOWED BRIDE. As for the task of Lady Allegra Evelyn—that of wottoning to her young husband the blow of his mother’s disgrace and death—it was not so difficult as at the first outset 1t might _ have appeared. Captain Evelyn was very much downcast at first, but his nature fortunately did not possess the depth of his sister’s, and after the first suddenness of the tragedy had worn itself away, he soon reconciled himself to the in- evitable. Captain Ernest had chosen well when he made a stolen marriage of it with the Reverend Ralph Hskett’s pretty gov- erness, and he never for an instant regretted that Kena Per- cival had refused him so unceremoniously. - Blanche and Allegra, as it thus happened, each had sep- arate loves and interests of their own, and Rena was appar- ently alone. ‘I shall never marry, papa,” said she, sitting, one after- noon, on one of the flat, level terraces that overhung the lake. -*T am going to stay with you always, and be yovr com- panion and comforter.” ‘You will be that, whether you marry or remain single,” the earl answered, drawing her tenderly to his‘side. ‘‘Do you know, my little Katherine, that you are very young to regis- ter a vow of eternal celibacy ?” ‘But I am in erneast for all that, papa,’ ’ she persisted. «*You think you are, Rena.” She shook back her shining dark curls, and looked smilingly into his face. ‘*You will see, papa,” she answered, gayly. ‘‘Somehow I feel myself sifted with the spirit of prophecy and foresight this evening. I can see all my future life sketched out be- fore me like one of the maps in Ernest’s guide-books.” The earl looked at her with a proud, amused smile. ‘Tell me what it is that you see,” he said, humoring her fancy. ‘<I see you and myself all alone at Glenhampton Castle— for Vere and Ernest will take my sisters away to independ- ent homes of their own in time—walking all alone on the ~— terraces in the summer evenings, sitting all alone by the fire in the great drawing-room on winter nights. We shall ~be very happy, papa, because we love one. another so much, but it will be a serene, quiet sort of happiness, like the sun- shine of a September day. Oh, papa, I have the love of so comicbooks.com