A Heart's Bitterness — page 259: what you’re looking at

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

A HEART’S BITTERNESS. =——«&HL'—. and if she had remembered them, she would not have cared to ask them back. Too mad to consider such an improbability, the Lord of Leigh hurried to ‘‘The Earl’s Folly”—his ancestor’s folly and his own. With eager steps he bounded up the stairs to the room in the second story. ‘There, in the center of the floor, stood Helen Hope in her bridal array. He stopped astounded as at a vision. Helen was as pallid as the dead; dark circles of sleeplessness and sorrow were under her large, burning, long-lashed eyes. Her black hair lay in thick waves between the white velvet of her bonnet and the marble whiteness of her brow. Her face was full of a supreme anguish and despair, and yet never had Helen been so regally beautiful. | ‘“ Norman,” she said, ‘‘it is my wedding-day.” ‘Then why are you here, Helen?” he cried, desperately. ‘“'To take leave of you, Norman.” | | ‘Is it to be at this parish church, Helen? I had not heard. Come, let the past perish. Shall I go with you, and give away the bride at the altar.” ‘Could you do it, Norman?” “‘Indeed, yes—gladly, Helen.” ‘<'Then, once for all—you never loved me?” ‘No, no! I have told you so a hundred times. Why bring up that folly? Come, let us go.” “Yes, I go, not to life, but to death—not to a waiting lover, but to the waters of the Black Pool!” One window of the room opened to the floor upon a little open platform that overhung the pool. She sprang upon this, looked back, waved her hand. “You are guilty of my death. ‘They will.search for me, and Kemp will charge you with my murder. The boy knows you came here at my call. Revenge is sweet !” He could not let her perish so, and springing out, he cs PY SS gk A ee ee ee ish oe "hey a BP men A | Bes Eee PT Ee a el hte ty LAO TN Rie eee Giang te aly crt ite A Ah Ot EE EO nee TP eam ear iy coh a Ee Oe ot * . . Ay? rigs? s “~ ~ ot ABS ‘ on wel x — x clasped her waist to drag her back. But Norman Leigh was not an athletic man, while Helen Hope was a vigorous _— woman, in the mighty passion of despair.. She locked her two strong arms about his neck, and crying, ‘“‘I said you. should live for me, or die with me!” carried him down with her under the. fatal waters of the Black Pool. a Feomicbooks.co