The Widowed Bride — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

76 _ THE WIDOWED BRIDE. “Of course you can’t—you couldn’t if you were to try for a twelvemonth!” | «Tell me what it is?” | ‘‘An offer of marriage, little innocence!” She held the letter triumphantly above her sister’ s head as she spoke, contemplating Alice’s face of sure and bewilderment. ‘Rena, from whom?” ‘‘Not Monsieur Lemaire,” laughed Rena, archly. ‘‘It’s from the Reverend Decimus!” The Reverend Decimus Kent, the tenth son of a country clergyman, down in Dor setshire, was the theological instruc- tor at Hartford Lodge, thereby earning a slight addition to the by no means plenteous stipend attached to his hard- ‘worked London curacy. He was tall and pale, with thin, colorless hair, light blue eyes, and a face which by no means did justice to the genius, self-denial, and nobility of his nature. Hehad firmly resolved never to marry, not because he did not fully appreciate the advantages of a cozy home and a domestic circle sacred to himself, but because he knew his salary was too small, his hopes too slender, to warrant involving another life in his own patient career of self-sacri- fice. But what.are human resolutions worth, even the boldest and most steadfast of them, when they are actually subjected to the tests of temptation? ‘The Reverend Decimus, vowed to celebacy though he was, somehow got Rena Percival’s dark eyes and wavy hair curiously commingled with Paley’s Theology and Blair’s Sermons, and waked, all of a sudden, to the overwhelming consciousness that he was in love with the pretty little suchas who listened so gravely to his expositions. Of course he resolved to conquer his folly, but there are some species of folly more difficult to conquer than others; and the more the Reverend Decimus Kent determined he would not think about Rena Percival, the more he thought about her. “T must remove myself out of the way of temptation,” thought Mr. Kent. And he sat down and wrote a long letter to a country rector—an old friend of his father’s— _ offering his services as an assistant during the ensuing sum- mer. “Tf he accepts my offer,” thought Mr. Kent, “I will take “Comicbooks.co