A Heart's Bitterness — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

A HEART’S BITTERNESS. 147 and Helen should personate Anna at the ‘‘fern fantasie,” leaving Anna free to go to Mrs. Watson’s. ° As Anna had a marvelous gift for conversing in monosyllables, the exchange might be fairly easy. It was thus that in a green domino, with mossy-brown trimmings, Helen Hope. arrived at the Countess Norfolk’s underthe chaperonage of Violet, who, on entering the car-. riage, had innocently remarked: | _ “Why, Anna! how tall:and slender that plain domino makes you look, and what an immense time you kept the carriage!” ““ Yes,” said softly the supposititious Anna. Norman Leigh was also in the carriage, sulking in one corner. His presence thrilled and fired the mad heart of the infatuated Helen Hope. For him life was aspasm of fury, as wherever he went he expected to see Edna attended ~ by devoted cavaliers, from whom he, the husband of Violet, must be excluded. | Merry and charming masques filled the splendid recep- tion-rooms of the Countess of Norfolk. Night, ‘Titania, Sleep, Dreams, all the fern varieties, Endymion, Diana, Oberon, Puck, Orion; but, stateliest and loveliest of all, was Edna Haviland as Luna. She wasina robe and vail of diaphanous tissue, with silver threads; it was looped with stars, and sown with tiny crystal drops like dew. ‘To look at her was to remember the song of the romance lay, ‘‘Her eyes are softer than sleep.” On each shoulder her delicate, misty vail was caught by a pearl and silver lunar moth. , Violet Leigh was Titania, and a sweet fairy queen she was. Lord Leigh was in a plain domino of green velvet, with silver dots, representing a South American fern—on his shoulder was the lunar moth, which he had found in the box he had received from Helen Hope. | There were many dominoes of silver and brown, such as Anna Ainslie had chosen. Early in the evening Leigh attached himself to the train that followed Edna, for, as she wore no mask, all knew her, and a crowd pressed about her. : ‘“We are matched by fate to-night, fair Luna,” said Leigh, ‘‘the same emblem rests on the shoulders of us” both.” : «That is curious,” said Edna. ‘I thought no one else Gomicbooks (E(@)