Her Faithful Knight — page 222: what you’re looking at

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

218 A Widowe7’s Letter. given in so low a voice and were so broken by sobs that Darcy could not catch their import. Mr. Derrick was in a state of the keenest excitement and anxiety. Was it possible, he asked himself, that either Dorothy or Phyllis could really be dead, just now when he had triumphantly run them to earth, after being thrown off the scent for so many months? There was no _ event he would consider more wholly desirable than the death of Phyllis, against whom he cherished the dull dis- like which some men feel against the women they have most deeply injured. But the possible death of Dorothy was a very different matter, and at the mere idea of such an event Darcy trembled from head to foot. The feeling he entertained for Dorothy, which he was pleased to call love, was as strong as, if not stronger than, ever, and many events had occurred since that honeymoon journey to render a reconciliation with her not only desirable, but of vital importance. The one and only obstacle whieh stood in the way of his perfect married happiness with Dorothy was,so Darcy de- cided, the existence of her sister Phyllis. His vanity was so inordinate and it had been so fostered by easy con- quests among women, that he really believed he could speedily transform Dorothy’s dislike against him, which he characterized as hysterical, into a no less passionate regard, and he was as inconsolable for her loss and as strenuously détermined to regain her as though she had been the most devoted of wives. “After all,” he told himself, as he waited outside the sister’s home during Dr. Wentworth’s visit, “it cannot be either Dorothy or Phyllis who is dead. Three hours ago I saw them both. Phyllis sprang from her seat in de- light and stretched out her arms at sight of me, and Doro- thy darted past me on her way home. ‘They were both tall, strong, and perfectly healthy women. Doubtless the comicboo <S (E(0)