A Heart's Bitterness — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

aa ne A HEART’S BITTERNESS. 133 the man or not? Had he flung him to his death? Did he bear the brand of Cain? fh Lord Leigh felt like one in a continuous, terrible night- mare. ‘lhe vision of that man sinking backward into empty space, uttering no cry, making no effort to stay his fall, and then the black, still waters sending widening cir- cles to the dark shore, and not even one bubble of breath coming up to tell of the life that had been, filled Norman Leigh with a sickening ‘horror. What had been his part in this tragedy? He had felt full of fury, and sprang forward intent on seizing and rending away whatever papers the man held. Had he, in his fury, flung him from his precarious place? Had he been guilty ~ of his death? Norman Leigh’s spirit a terrible horror fell. Had hetouched _ His distress increased almost to a mania. He saw no more of Helen, could not learn that any one had seen the stranger, nor heard of him. He searched and sought all about the Pool, but found no sign of him who was possibly his victim. - He sought to calm the tumult of his spirit by interesting himself in other things. He took refuge in the society of his wife; her innocence and gentleness soothed his per- turbed spirit. He now took her with him when he drove about the-estate, and her presence seemed to exorcise the fiends that haunted his soul. Together they made a trip to London to order wedding-presents for Clare and Grace, and when the gifts came home, and Leigh looked on Clare’s diamonds glittering in their velvet bed, he suddenly said, bitterly: | JT know what piece of news I’d like best to take the colonel for his wedding present. Zounds!~he would look — black, but I #m sick of having my senior boast himself as my heir.” Violet flushed, but made no reply. In these days Leigh spoke to her often of his longing for an heir, and Violet saw that her childless state was likely to widen and make per- _ manent the breach between them. . The middle of December saw the. Earl and Countess of | Leigh among the chief witnesses of the ‘‘ marriage of Clare, eldest daughter of Andrew, tenth Earl of Montressor, to . Colonel James Peter Lester Leigh Hartington, heir pre- _ sumptive of the Harldom of Leigh,” and so on. eo Gomicbooks.co