Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 171: what you’re looking at

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

164 A SEVERE THREAT. you dead, and Geraldine—she is young, and the young must have some one to love, you know—learned in time to care for another.” ‘‘Meaning Sir John Sydney ?” queried Howard, with a with- ering sneer. | ‘‘Meaning Sir John Sydney,” returned the other, gravely. ‘* Have you never heard of love that is won by gentleness, kind- ness, patient devotion? Can you not understand how Geraldine might have been brought to overlook the difference in years be- tween herself and Sir John; and believing you dead, she al- lowed herself to be won—not coerced or unduly influenced, for the days of forced marriages are passed.” Howard Ashleigh bowed his head witha groan. Then the words which Geraldine had spoken to him in the great bare room at that lonely old house, flashed back upon his memory : ‘‘T hate him, Mr. Ashleigh; I Aa Sir John Sydney !” He glanced into the crafty face before him. ‘©T do not believe you, sir,” he said, concisely. There is an old adage to the effect that the devil always helps his own, Thissaying darted into Lionel Vernon’s mind at that moment. He recollected that in his pocket lay a small note- book or diary, the property of his daughter. Moved by an ir- resistible impulse he had abstracted the book from her eserzvotre, and had glanced over the contents. How fortunate that he could now recall one certain entry in its pages. He drew it forth and laid it in Howard’s hand. ‘*Glance over that page, my friend,” he said, quietly, indicat- ing a certain entry, ‘‘and afterward, if you think best, go and claim your wife.” With a strange conviction of coming evil, Howard glanced at the entry before him. He knew that whatever it might prove to be, it must be genuine, for this old man had believed him dead, and could not, therefore, have prepared himself for such an ernergency as this. He saw the following lines in Geraldine’s — own handwriting: ECOomichbooks:co =)