The Widowed Bride — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

16 THE WIDOWED BRIDE. eyes are ever bent upon the ground. ‘The old housekeeper - at the castle declared that Lord Glenhampton had never ‘fairly looked up” since the death of his fair, young wife and her twin babies; and perhaps she was not far from right. “The present Countess of Glenhampton had been a young widow at the time of her elevation to the peerage, with one boy, two years old, and her only child by her present mar- riage was a little girl, now aboutseven, a dark-haired child, who bore the hereditary title of Lady Blanene Arden. Lady Glenhampton was brilliantly beautiful, with large, melting, oriental eyes, hair luxuriant, and purple black, and a skin of creamy whiteness; her daughter, child though she was, inherited her Jewess-like beauty, and little Ernest Evelyn, about ten years old, bore the same type of dark bril- lance. She reclined in her drawing-room, this September even- ing, in a dress of gold colored satin, trimmed with dra- peries and festoonsof white lace, and set off by the blaze of | the rare oriental topazes which encircled her throat and flashed from her ears. Ernest Evelyn sat on the floor at her feet, with a book in hislap, pouring witha child’s intent- ness over its pictured pages, and the little Lady Blanch was uttering childish shouts of delight as she bounded back and forth, joining iu the gambols of a pretty Italian gray-- hound, as white as milk, while Miss Clive, the children’s governess, sat in the open window beyond. Antonia Clive was scarcely on the footing of an ordinary governess at Glenhampton Castle. She had been the count- ess most intimate friend when she was simple Mrs. Evelyn —she was still a favorite with the titled lady.. Just twenty- eight years old, and in the full bloom and blush of her womanhood, Miss Clive presented a singular and exquisite foil to the dark beauty of Lady Glenhampton. She was dazzlingly fair, with a complexion where roses and lilies were radiantly commingled, hair of so pale a shade of gold that, deprived of the warming touch of sun- shine it became almost flaxen, and beryl-green eyes, deep- ening to the softest blue iz moments of interest or excite- _ ment, while her features were of that pure Grecian outline one only sees in ancient pictures and statues. Like Lady Glenhampton, she was tall, but of reed-like slenderness, - and it was always her preference to wear white dresses; _ S) Comichoo €o