Her Faithful Knight — page 235: what you’re looking at

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

Good News that Came Too Late. 231 and the fact that she was a rich woman served only to fill her with poignant regrets. The violent emotions of the past twenty-four hours, coming as they did after four whole years of overwork of body and brain, had strained Dorothy’s powers to the utmost, and she was now on the brink of a serious break- down. All need for working and striving had been suddenly taken away just at the moment when constant, enforced occupation might have proved a solace to her. She had nothing to do but to remain passive and conceal herself {from the man she so feared and hated until such time as she could secretly leave England. There were no im- mediate duties to drive from her brain the thought of her sister’s wrongs, her sister’s sufferings, her blighted life, the cruel suddenness of her death. When at length, worn out with grief, she lay down on her bed to sleep, a sort of vertigo possessed her mind. Hour after hour she fancied that she was endeavoring to escape with Phyllis from an exaggerated and mon- strous Darcy Derrick, looming behind: them, diabolical in form and power. And as his shadow neared them, Phyllis’ warm hand would turn to coldest clay within Dorothy’s protecting clasp, her heart would graduaily cease to beat, and when, in an agony of terror, Dorothy seized her in her arms, it was a corpse, and not a living woman she held there. Through the semi-delirium of that terrible night, one only ray of hope shone through the thick cloud of -her fevered imaginings. Sometimes, as she and Phyllis were about to fall into the clutches of their enemy, a strong man’s hand would seize both hers and draw her out be- yond Darcy’s reach. The form and features of this Perseus of dreamland were blurred and indistinct; but when at one point she strained to see his face, she knew EOmicboo CS (E@)