Beadle's Dime Novels No. 126: Old Jupe — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

28 OLD JUPR. she welcomed Luke. He came in, dressed with more care than had been his habit of late years ; his beard and hair were trimmed, and he seemed quite like the easy, graceful, hand- some man who had won her fancy of old. Yet he was thin and pale. He grew paler as he took her hand, and a strange fire burned in his eyes. “ Annette,” said he, holding her hand tightly, “do you love me ?” “ Love you ?” she stammeré@. The question had come at last, so unexpectedly, that she was taken unawares. She looked up quickly, but her eyes fell again before that steady, burning gaze. “T once had reason to think,” he continued in a low voice, “ before I married the woman I did, that Annette, not know- ing of my engagement to her sister, had allowed herself to become interested in me. Say, wasit so? | “ Luke, why do you ask? I did love you.” “And do still? Will you be my wife, if I wish it?” The passionate eyes now returned his fiery regard. “YT would go through fire and water to be your wife, Luke. I never loved my husband. I married him in a fit of despera- tion and mortified vanity because you had slighted me. I was miserable while he lived. Oh, Luke, if I thought that I could make you happy! I scarcely hoped that you would ever trust any woman with your happiness again. But, if I could make up the past to you—’”: “You can, Annette! you can make me the most blessed man on the face of the earth.” “ Dear Luke.” ¢ “You can make me very happy, Annette. I only ask a little thing of you. ‘It is but to give me one sweet as- surance—to tell me truly—if this piece of paper belongs to you!” He dragged her to the waning light, and thrust the scrap of letter-paper before her eyes which Jupe had brought from Missouri. For an instant she was bewildered, gazing at it blankly. Then a sense of his full meaning rushed over her, the passion of wrath, instead of love, Which moved him—the bitter sneer under the assumed gentleness—the relentless will to humilate, crush and subdue her. She quailed under the commiclooOolkks. coh —