Her Faithful Knight — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

Mr. Darcy’s Comedy Company. II5 racked his brains as to how to detain her. The moon- light lent to her delicate features and firmly closed mouth an almost icy purity. It was certain, he told himself with a throb of delight, that this girl had never in her life cared for any man, and her answer when he suddenly asked her how she liked her new part confirmed him in this belief. “T really don’t know how to play it, Mr. Derrick. I don’t understand such a woman. For instance, the way in which she speaks when she first meets the hero seems so very strange to me. How could she feel all that for a man she’d never seen before ?” “Can you not understand?” he asked in a very low voice, which vibrated with tremulous passion, “‘what it is to fall in love at first sight?” “No,” she answered frankly. Then she thought of Aylmer Read and blushed. “T have read of such things, of course,” she added hur- riedly, “and I can understand them, I suppose, in a man, but not in a woman.” “You cannot understand a woman loving?” he asked in a voice still lower than before. She turned her head and gazed at him, saw his eyes dilated and shining in the moonlight. and forthwith was seized with a sudden and altogether unaccountable dislike which for the moment amounted almost to hatred against him. | It was as though an invisible hand had helped her to rise, tall and stately, from her seat, and a voice which was not her own, but strangely hard and sharp, spoke for her. “No, Mr. Darcy, I cannot understand it, nor do I care to discuss the subject. Good-night.” CEOMNICOO© “S (E@)