Her Faithful Knight — page 211: what you’re looking at

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

A Shadow on the Window. 207 Her father had been an extravagant, passionate man, who, in a fit of despair had shot himself; her mother, a foolish, impulsive creature, who had died from a chill caught by her own imprudence; and Shafto, their only © son, was an admitted failure, intolerant in temper, rebel- lious against all constituted authority, a man who had dis- appeared from respectable society fully seven years ago. “We come of a bad stock,” Dorothy reflected. ‘And I myself shall most certainly kill Darcy Derrick if he forces his way again into my life or Phyllis’. I feel my teeth clench and my fists curl up at the mere thought of him, and at the sound of his voice a very demon of hate would, I know, take possession of me. ‘That is the part I can’t understand, for I have never willingly hurt anything alive. But I hate him all the more for making me feel so hate- ful!” Dorothy’s mind was essentially feminine, strong in in- tuition and weak in reason, and one of her distinguishing characteristics was a lofty disregard for the letter of the law. She had her own religion, and her own standard— in many ways a very high one—of right and wrong; but no possible course of reasoning could induce in her a re- spect for the majesty of the law, and the fact that she was legally Darcy Derrick’s wife troubled her very little when once she thought herself secure from his interference, after throwing her wedding ring out of the window of the train on her way back to town. That Darcy should claim her as his wife would ever appear to her an unnatural horror. In Dorothy’s eyes he was her sister Phyllis’ husband. He had deceived, dis- owned and deserted her, and broken her heart; but in Dorothy’s eyes he was Phyllis’ husband, whatever the law had to say on the subject. Meantime, it was painfully evident that, married or single, Phyllis would never again be her old bright self. Eomichbooks (Eo)