The Widowed Bride — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 67 ing, and saw Rena bending silently over her desk. ‘‘Really, you deserve great credit for your industry and persever- ance.” | ‘‘Rena looked up, the bright pink mantling her cheek. ‘‘Monsieur Lemaire is so particular with us,” she an- swered, demurely. Adela Cheriton went up to her room that evening to put a white rose in among her blonde braids, for Miss Cheriton fully appreciated her own full blossomed beauty, and liked © to heighten it by all manner of artfully applied little acces- soriés. She was about to take a hair-pin from the embroid- ered cushion, on the toilet table, when something white, half hidden under the fringe, caught her. eye—a letter, directed simply ‘‘T’o the Blonde Mademoiselle,” and with a sudden flush of scarlet to her cheek, she recognized the pe- culiarly pointed handwriting of Monsieur Adolphe Lemaire. Hastily she carried it to the window, where the last crim- son tints of sunset yet lingered in the west, affording a suf- ficiency of ght to decipher the contents of the billet-doux, for such it proved. A real, genuine love-letter, such as Adela Cheriton, with all her romantic proclivities, and novel reading habits, had never before perused—a letter breathing ardent affection, and expressed in the prettiest and quaintest of English, with here and there a French expression woven in, as if the Anglo-Saxon language did not contain words warm and ex- pressive enough for M. Lemaire’s tender thoughts to em- body themselves in. Adela’s cheeks glowed, her eyes glittered, and her heart throbbed as she read. M. Adolphe Lemaire loved her after all; he had lost his ardent young heart to her golden hair, and liquid blue eyes, He told her so in language that there was no mistaking; he asked her if she could consent to allow him to worship directly at her shrine, and enjoined — again and again the strictest secrecy; for Miss Hartford, as he gracefully expressed it, was a ‘‘slave to conventionalities,” and his position depended solely upon’ his own self-com- mand, and her discretion, and he closed by hinting that a - note left in the hollow of an old cherry tree, in the least frequented alley of the old-fashioned garden back of the house, would be brought straight to him by a messenger whom he could trust. Adela Cheriton kissed the pink-scented paper over and (e(e) cComicbooks ™