Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

148 | A SEVERE THREAT. -agonized gaze rested upon the great gaping hole in the white breast, whence the red blood was still slowly oozing. ‘« Murdered! she gasped, piteously ; ‘‘murdered! Oh, my God ! my God! who can have done so foul a deed ?” With her two slim hands she essayed to bind up the fearful wound ; but all her efforts to restore her mother availed not— Stella Gordon was past saving. When the girl saw, at last, that all her efforts were in vain, she folded the white hands upon the cold, lifeless breast, and crouched down at her dead mother’s side. The two faces were wondrously alike. The child was only a fresher, younger copy of the original. Lustrous, dark eyes and heavy waves of midnight hair ; delicate features, and creamy complexion, betraying Spanish origin in every graceful, undulating movement. The moments passed slowly. At length Lola lifted her heavy eyes, and staggered to her feet. The little clock upon the pine mantel chimed the hour of ten. She rested her arm upon the mantel, and her slumberous eyes were fixed upon the empty grate; her lips were set in a narrow line; there was a bitter, vengeful expression upon her features. ‘‘Who and where zs my father?” she burst forth, bitterly. ‘Curse him, wherever he is! He has never acknowledged his own wife and child; never been aught to us but a miserable tyrant. Ihate him! It was at my instigation that mamma left France, where he had hidden us away, his sole excuse being that I might be educated at the old convent of St. Mary. I have never seen him since he left us there, five years ago. But L think I shall know him, if we ever chance to meet again. There is some secret, some hidden mystery about it all, and I swear to ferret it out, if it cost me my life !” She paused, and her moody gaze cee over to her mother’s white, still face. ‘‘Out in the world I go,” she went on, slowly, her dark eyes kindling with a brassy light, ‘‘ to find this man, who has devas- tated my mother’s life, who has wrought her ruin, and who, as comicbooks (eo)