Her Faithful Knight — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

108 Mr. Darcy’s Comedy Company. voutly hoped the girl would not “take it into her head to flirt with dear Stourton. He is so impressionable where a pretty face is concerned.” - . As to whether the women liked her or not or thought about her at all, Dorothy cared not one straw. She was _ there among them simply and solely in order to earn sixty pounds to defray the expenses of her sister’s illness; she meant to try her utmost to earn the money honestly, but as she felt strongly convinced that under no circum- stances would she ever be able to act, she knew that this was probably the one and only occasion in which she would be connected with the stage. This experience came to her as something quite outside her life, and she was so fully occupied in planning how best the money could be laid out for Phyllis’ advantage, that she became lost in a reverie and entirely forgot her immediate sur- roundings. Hastings on a summer evening was warm with a moist heat, which had lain all day in a blue-grey mist over sea and land. The Stourton-Chepes gave Dorothy some ad- dresses in a fashionable street near their own, but the girl was so eager to save all she could from her personal expenses that she walked about for over an hour until she found for herself two rooms in a mean little red-brick terrace at ten shillings a week, with a woman who did not “object to taking in theatricals.” The question of lodgings being settled and an economi- cal meal of tea and bread and butter disposed of, at nine o’clock the balminess of the evening tempted Dorothy out toward the sea. She did not wish to meet either mem- bers of the company or visitors to the town. On the pier and on the parade bevies of young women, chattering and giggling, promenaded together, and endeavored by shrill hilarity and many backward glances to attract the wandering attention of youths in flannel suits and sand- COMMCIOOKS