A Heart's Bitterness — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

- 104 A HEART’S BITTERNESS. Thank you—you are very good, Norman,” she said, softly. ‘Then remember to be equally good to me.” — «“T want to be good,” she said, looking wistfully into his eyes; won’t you help me—help me all the time, Nor- | > man?’ | She pressed his arm gently with her little hand, and then took Lady Burton up to the rooms which the housekeeper at Lord Leigh’s order had made ready. All her gracious little duties as hostess—she left weightier matters to the housekeeper—the constant diversions de- vised by the young people, her own honest efforts to fix her thoughts and attentions on Norman and distract them from Kenneth, served to occupy and quiet the mind of the lovely little Countess of Leigh. It was Keith who suffered most during that visit at the Towers. The next day the indefatigable Mrs. Ainslie had arranged for the young people an excursion including a picnic in a supposed Druidical ruin. Anna rode well, and Anna and Keith, Grace and Churchill, Violet and Leigh were to ride, and the elders to go in a landau. Just at the last minute, Leigh proclaimed that ‘‘he had a beastly head- ache and would not go,” and so sent his horse back to A stables. Keith, therefore, was left to escort Violet and nna. The five on horseback reached the appointed spot, but no carriages appeared with their seniors, servants, or pro- visions. Suddenly a great black cloud came tearing across the sky, and a tremendous crash of thunder woke the echoes. Violet’s timid, nervous Arabian, which being gentle had been left with the rein simply thrown over a furze bush, while the party made the pilgrimage of the ruins, flung up its slender head, with a shrill cry, and darted away, almost as swift as the lightning that followed : the peal. Then the rain of that summer gust began to pour down. The five desolate equestrians endeavored to save themselves by crawling under the shelter of that three-legged stone table, called:by courtesy a Druidical Altar, where in some fashion they might be sheltered. _ Yom Churchill, with a fine prevision of accidents, had carried a large soft Mexican poncho rolled up behind his saddle, and he wrapped this about Grace and Anna, and (E(0) Eomicbooks