The Widowed Bride — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 76 whose eyes were shining down into her own with such a tender, hazel light! ‘“Will you be my friend, Miss Percival?” she asked, with a caressing shyness in her manner, ‘“‘I think I shall hke you very much!” And thus began a friendship between the two girls, which grew into protecting tenderness on the side of the elder one, a sort of admiring idolatry on the part of the younger. In the peaceful days, before the great instinct of wifehood is developed in the heart of the young maiden, there comes a season in which she elevates into the shrine of a goddess some blessed companion, investing her with all the attri- butes of purity and perfection, clinging to her with blind devotion, treasuring up her looks, her words, her smiles! Rena Percival was the goddess whom Blanche Arden wor- shiped with all the passionate loving ardor of her sixteen young years! he months crept away until the year rounded itself into its fullness of time, and drew near to the evening preceding Rena and Alice Percival’s graduation day. The young ladies of the graduating class, only nine or ten in number—for Miss Hartford prided herself more and more upon the exclusive selectness of her establishment—were to wear white muslin dresses, with broad blue sashes, and blue ribbons in their hair, their only ornaments a bunch of white roses worn in the corsage or at the belt. Alice sat in her room, putting the last dainty stitches in the dress she was to be adorned with on the morrow. “Why don’t you have a dressmaker do it?” Lady Blanche had innocently asked, and Alice had answered, calmly: ‘‘Because we can’t afford it, Blanche, dear. We are not — rich like you.” She was murmuring the refrain of a little Italian ballad to herself, at her work, when the door opened, and Rena entered. Alice glanced up with a smile. ‘““Why, Rena, darling, how your eyes sparkle!” she ex- _ claimed; ‘‘and what is that letter in your hand?” ‘‘What do you suppose, dear?” laughingly asked Rena, as she sat down by her sister’s side, and passed one arm around Alice’s slender waist, *‘] cannot guess,” =a — comicboo <S (ele)