Her Faithful Knight — page 273: what you’re looking at

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

Aylmer’s Household 269 he reached it, and an extremely pretty girl in a high- necked black silk dinner-dress ran out to meet him. “Aylmer! we were getting in such a state about you! Where have you been? Mamma’s cried herself into one of her headaches. We began to think you’d been lost in the fog, or run over, or something.” He laughed. “Surely I’m big enough to take care of myself,’ he said. “Besides, it isn’t the first time that business has kept me away. But where is your mother? I have brought a visitor with me.” “A visitor? Is it a man?” “No, a lady—Mrs. Philip Ransome, widow of one of my old colleagues at Clofield. She has just come up from the country. She has been very ill, and knows no one in London, and asked me to advise her where she could stay for a few days. So I could not do otherwise than ask her here. I know you and Aunt Harriet will be very nice to her. She has had a hard life of late, and I re- ceived much kindness from poor old Ransome.” “Mrs. Ransome! Oh, I have heard you speak of her. She is very beautiful, isn’t she?” . Aylmer knew there was no surer way by which a man can set one woman against another than praising her looks. So he dissimulated. “Beauty is a matter of taste,” he said; “but I believe some people admire Mrs. Ransome. What is more im- portant is that she is a very nice woman, and that she is sitting outside in the cab catching cold in the fog.” “T’ll fetch her in!” cried Rosa, and seizing a shawl from the hatstand she darted out, full of curiosity to behold the unexpected guest. | Dorothy, quaking with apprehension in the cab, saw a tall, slight figure flitting down the garden path, and heard a sweet, cordial girl’s voice uttering words of welcome. GComicsoo S (<(0) =)