A Heart's Bitterness — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

84 A HEART’S BITTERNESS. I so much more unhappy than other people? I am ruined, J am ruined!” ‘‘ What are you saying? You are wild, my little love,” sobbed poor Kate, clasping her lady’s knees. ‘‘ What has happened? Where have you been?” ‘Kate, I am ruined for this life, and I want to die. ~ You will have to know, so I tell youu—Adam came for me. Lord Leigh is at Homburg, gambling away all he has. I am married to a gambler! I have been to Lord Keith to go and bring him home, and save him for this time. But there will be other times and no one to go for him, and where will it end?” «<T don’t care where it ends for him!” said Kate, savagely, _her heart rising in an intense relief. ‘‘I wish it would end in his blowing his brains out, and leaving you free,” she added to her herself. Then aloud: ‘‘ Don’t take on so, my lady. Don’t talk of dying, lady dear, cheer up!’ And then the faithful Kate lifted Violet in her strong arms, and undressed her, brushed her brown rings of silken hair, and put her to bed, and until gray dawn sat near her, her heart answering to every plaintive sob and sigh that shook the prone figure of the little countess in her troubled sleep. T'wo days after there was the sound of arrival, and Violet - ran out of her dressing-room to give the best welcome she might to her returned husband. His worn, haggard face and restless eyes touched her. She went up to him, and putting up a soft hand to lay on each -of his cheeks, she said, gently: ‘Tl am glad you-have come back, Norman!” ‘So you’ve found out? More fool I!” he said, sulkily. ‘Let us forget it,” she said. ‘‘Let us think it a bad dream, and wake up to better things.” ‘* Well, it’s dused good-natured of you to say so. Jove! Id like to show you what I think of it!” ‘So you can,” she said, leading him toa seat. ‘‘ Let us-_ go to Leigh Towers—let us go home, Norman!” In what way Lord Keith had brought back to his duty the recreant Lord of Leigh, Violet did not know. Neither Keith nor Leigh said a word of that fatal visit to Homburg. But, uncongenial as the two men were by nature, an in- _ timacy suddenly rose between them; Keith made the ad- vances, and Leigh responded to them, surlily at first, as if cComichbooks.co