Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

132 | A SEVERE THREAT. low, retreating brow, and eyes like a ferret’s;.a heavy, gray beard and mustache, with overhanging brows of the same hue— Sir John Sydney. She caught her breath hard, like one in mortal pain. Into her face there crept a look of desperate horror. Then slowly she lifted her heavy eyes, and signed her own death-sentence. ‘<T will obey you, father,” she said, ina low, stern, unnatural tone, ‘‘ because you are my father, though, Heaven knows, you have never been as one to me. I will consent to marry this man whom I hate—Aaz, do you understand? ‘¢ But, so help me Heaven ! he shall rue the day that he made me his unloving wife—I, who hold naught in my heart for him but bitter hatred! His future shall be one long scene of un- happiness. I swear to do all in my power to render him miser- able. I will pass my life in plotting against his peace, his hap- piness, his very existence! Living, I will be to him a con- tinual reproach and torture; dying, I will come back from the tomb to haunt him ! | ‘“No threat is too severe for the dastardly coward who has instigated this unmanly persecution, and who would drag a heart-broken woman into an unholy marriage. This is no idle threat. I have registered it in my heart, and, so help me 1’? Heaven, I will keep it to the bitter end ! A footfall sounded on the bare floor ; she raised her eyes, and a low moan of horror and anguish escaped her white lips. CHAPTER IV. SEVEN DAYS’ GRACE, The cry was frozen upon Geraldine’s lips as her eyes fell | upon the hated face*of Sir John Sydney. He had grown - tired of waiting for Lionel Vernon to report the ‘progress of affairs, and had ventured into the young girl’s presence. She put out her hands with a gesture of loathing. Eomichooks.co hep.)