Beadle's Dime Novels No. 3: Myra, the Child of Adoption — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

WHOSE CHILD AM 1? 81 fot a contradiction of the words he had spoken. She saw nothing there to relieve the doubt that ached at her heart. * Not my father? mamma not my mother?” she murmured, and the tears began to rain over her white cheeks. She sud- denly clasped her hands and stood up. “Then whose child am I ?” Mr. D. sat down; the angry fire was fast going out from his heart, and it could sustain him no longer. Regret, keen and self-accusing, took possession of him then. Love, pity, every tender feeling that had so long enlinked that young girl to his heart, all came back like birds to a ravaged nest. He would have given worlds for the power to annihilate those ten minutes of his life, when one fierce gleam of anger had un- locked the hoarded secret of years. He turned his eyes al- most imploringly on the trembling girl. His proud lip quiv- ered, his hand shook as he rested it on his knee. Myra crept toward him, heart-broken and wretched, beyond all her previous ideas of wretchedness. She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and bent her face to his as she had done many a time in her childhood, when some small trouble oppressed her. But oh, how unlike her sweet childhood were those agonized features ! “ Father—father!” she said, and her voice bespoke in its low and thrilling tones all the anguish he had inflicted— “Father, tell me; whose child am 1?” “ To-morrow, to-morrow !” said Mr. D.; “I can go through no more to-day.” “ But is it true that I am not your child?” said Myra, still hoping against hope. “Tt is true!” he answered; and rising from his seat with an unsteady step he entered his study. A moment after, Mrs. D. met Myra on the stairs. One glance in her face was enough. - “ Myra, daughter !” she ex- claimed ; “what is this? You are white as death—you trem- ble.” “ Mother—mother !” burst from the lips of the young girl, almost with a shriek; “they tell me that I am not your child !” Mrs. D. was struck motionless. Marble could not have been more coldly white than her face and hands, commicloooks.corn