The Widowed Bride — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 69 he said, taking the pencil out of her hand to strike out the — obnoxious word. “Oh, Ido, monsieur, Ido,” she faltered, with her big blue eyes raised for one instant to his face. Surely—surely, his hand had lingered upon hers, with a gentle pressure, as he took the pencil away—and she was satisfied. And her fair forehead was contracted by a momentary frown, as she saw how intently Rena Percival was watching her. — _- “The envious thing,” she thought; ‘if I only dared to tell her.” For about a week the correspondence went on dashingly, at the rate of a note per day, and sometimes more, while M. Lemaire, over and over again, enjoined upon his pupil the necessity for the utmost caution in school hours, until Adela scarcely ventured either to look at or speak to him during the hour in which they were together; and, at the end of that time, Adela packed her jewels and love-letters, and made stealthy preparations for an elopement, according to the proposal hazarded in M. Adolph’s last missive. To the romantic, unreasoning schoolgirl this was an ely- sium of delicious mystery and undefined bliss. An elope- ment, just exactly like a three-volume novel and with the pensively handsome Frenchman, Adela could conceive of no more brilliant ending to her school-day life. Of course papa and mamma, and Miss Hartford would be horrified — elderly people always were—but they would easily reconcile themselves to the inevitable when all was over and past rem- edy, and Madame Adolph Lemaire could fall so gracefully on her knees and plead for pardon in such plaintive phrases! ~ Again and again Adela rehearsed the scene over to herself, _as, having scaled the wall in the starry, luminous darkness of the July evening, she stole down the shady lane, at the end of which her Adolph had assured her that a carriage should be waiting. It happened that upon this special day of all others, Rena Percival had coaxed Miss Hartford to drive into London. Her caps were getting dolefully shabby, Rena declared, and Miss Hartford always liked to have Rena help select her coiffures, and the lace collars in which the elderly lady’s soul delighted ‘‘weren’t fit to be seen!” Miss Hartford was rather reluctant to go into town on such a broiling day, but Rena was always accustomed to getting her own way, and she got it this time. Now, so skillfully did Rena arrange €oO EComicbooks mi