Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 213: what you’re looking at

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

— 206 A SEVERE THREAT. _ trembled violently, and would have fallen but for the strong will which sustained her. She longed to dart forward, there in the presence of the vast audience, and point her finger at the wicked man who sat watch- ing her with eyes full of fiendish hatred, and cry aloud : % ‘‘You are John Gordon, the murderer of my mother !” But of what avail would er accusation be, without overwhelm- ing proof? She, a poor, nameless nobody, a waif, a simple play-actor ; and Ae Sir John Sydney, Bart., of Sydney House, a man with an immense rent-roll, and a title over two hundred years old! Birth, and position, and family name are mighty, while money, like charity, ‘‘covereth a multitude of sins.” She turned away, and sang the pretty ballad of ‘‘ Kathleen Mavourneen,” and the house came down, and the applause and the floral offerings were equally prodigious. In her hour of triumph the little singer would have been perfectly happy—save, ever and always, that haunting memory of her dead mother’s unavenged wrongs—but for the basilisk gaze of the two in the © box near by, for, intuitively, the girl felt that there was danger in the air. But, somehow, the play progressed, and at last the curtain fell, and Dot and Lola both were free to go home to Geraldine. As the-curtain descended, Sir John Sydney staggered ‘to his feet, white and trembling, for he was horribly afraid. He had long ago forgotten Lola's existence, forgotten that there had been a child, the issue of that ill-starred, ill-omened marriage ; and now, as he gazed upon the beautiful face, so familiar to him, on the stage, he believed that Stella, poor mur- dered Stella, stood before him. The name upon the bills was Stella, and the face that gazed upon him from the brightly lighted stage—that face, with the long, dusky hair all afloat, and the soft, lustrous dark eyes shining like stars, and the sweet, low voice which he remembered so well—all, all — were Stella's, his heart-broken wife, whom he had sought to murder. What if she had escaped? What if she were wait- Eomichbooks.co =)