The Widowed Bride — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

$4 THE WIDOWED BRIDE. like a trooper, that’s plain enough, but I’m inclined to think _ _these little girls have been mere tools in her hands.” “My dear Sir John,” exclaimed the fair-haired gentle- man, pressing the five fingers of his right hand hghtly against the five fingers of his left. ‘‘Why, what’s your opinion, then?” said the magistrate, — suddenly wheeling round his chair and looking the other full in the face. ‘That they are very artful, and have told an exceedingly plausible story. ‘““Pshaw!” said Sir John. ‘*You haven’t a bit of faith in - anything, Nickham.” “Not in many things, Sir John,” said Mr. Nickham, as if he considered it rather a laudable characteristic. — “‘But just look at the impossibility of the thing, my good sir. Here is the Hereford silver, with the family crest and mono- gram still on it——” “Because we happened to lay hold of 1t through superior good fortune before, instead of after it had found its way to the melting-pot,” interr upted the magistrate. ““Hxactly so—the Hereford silver carried by two little yirls—mere babies to look at. Now, do you suppose if they hadn’t been old hands this Margery Meiklebren would ever have trusted to them in this sort of way ? Do you suppose this girl would have lain still in a barn under such suspicious circumstances as she details? Nota bit of it. Wouldn’t it have been natural to rouse the neighbors—to give the alarm? Yo, no; depend upon it she’s in the very thick of it, with ll her innocent looks, and the other’s just as bad. Why, Ane very smooth, straightforward story she tells is enough to convince me. An innocent child would be frightened out of her senses in a place like this. ‘This one is as composed as if she were in her own home. Depend upon it, Sir John, she’s an old hand.” ‘She never has been here before,” interposed Sir John Lavely, wrinkling up his brows in an acute angle of per- plexity. ‘All the more credit to her duplicity. I’ve no doubt she has richly deserved it a score of times.” But here Rena herself most unexpectedly broke into the conversation. “You are telling wicked, wicked lies!” she burst out; ‘‘and it isn’t true, and I hate you!” --€omicbooks.co