Her Faithful Knight — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

236 Good News that Came Too Late. “Mr. Derrick must be a consummate hypocrite,” he observed thoughtfully. “In speaking of his late wife he employed terms of the wildest and most extravagant af- fection. He assured me he could not live without her, and cried like a child at the mention of her name.” “That is because she had just come into some property, and he knew it,”” Miss Knight said, scornfully. Dr. Wentworth listened and wondered; but he had many calls upon his time, and very shortly afterward took leave, after prescribing a sedative and a sleeping draught for his beautiful and excitable patient. Dorothy lay still for some little while after his de- parture; but there was something more to be done, and done instantly ; and, flinging on her dressing-gown again, she went to the head of the stairs and called Cresswell softly, as one instinctively calls in the house where the dead are lying. The old servant entered, pale, red-eyed, a little hurt and on her dignity in that she had not been consulted or even informed about the funeral. “Cresswell, dear,” Dorothy began, putting her hands on her shoulders, “I have something very, very impor- tant to say to you. For my dear sister’s sake, and for my sake, you must join me in something which looks like deception, but which we must carry through for a few days. Listen, and don’t cry. It is nothing very dreadful. You remember our great-aunt, Mrs. Julius Knight? Her lawyers have written to tell me that she is dead, and that she has-left me a large fortune; so that we shall not be poor any more. But some other very wicked people—that man Mr. Darcy Derrick, whom you saw—will try to get the money and to persecute me for it ; and the only way by which I can escape is to pretend that it is I, Dorothy, lying dead, and that I, whom you now see, am Phyllis. I see you can’t understand, and it GOMIGHoOO “S (E)