At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 205: what you’re looking at

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

194 AT A GIRD’S MERCY. and I was to wait for any answer she should have for him. That is all.”’ He bowed, and held toward the girl a small box set with tiny pearls, and studded with her name in rubies. She took it in her hand like a thing of ice, standing erect before the two men in all the dignity of her womanhood and her brave old blood that had descended to her through a line of noble Courtlands from the years of the ancient wars. The pallor on her face had given place to a flush as warm and flaming as the lhght in the west when the sun sets. There was nota quiver of a muscle as she touched the spring, and the lid lifted, revealing within, upon the blue satin lining, a faded spray of Canterbury bells. ow eee CHAPTER XXII. THE FORTUNES OF WAR. How many thoughts flashed through her mind as she listened to this man speaking of the spy who was to be shot on the morrow, and here it ended in nothing but the jewel-case that had been taken from her room that night long ago that set her mother so near death’s door, and laid such trouble upon them. Her face was set icily, and there was not a trace of the tremor that had struck the kindly heart upon the news of her father’s danger. If this thief of theirs was to be shot on the morrow—and how else could her jewel-case come into his possession ?>—what was itto her? It would be a fit ending to a life of such lawlessness. She wished no man harm, but had she not said she would find her daring robber some day, and though she had not thought that he would come to her through the strange fortunes of war, yet she was certain from the first that-she would some day hold him in her power, and mete to him the mercy he had shown to her and those dearer to her than her own life. And here he had been so strangely sent almost to her feet to be shot on the morrow at dawning. Was it a Nemesis that brought~— these marvelous things about in the wheeling world? » comicbooks.com —