Her Faithful Knight — page 291: what you’re looking at

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

The Exhumation. 287 most chivalrous and love-compelling guise. He came as her true knight, her champion, believing in her innocence against any evidence, and prepared to stake his honor in her cause. Fortunately for him it was a part for which his nature suited him, and which he could, therefore, as- sume without bravado or self-consciousness ; fortunately, also, he belonged to the physical type which was most congenial to the lady of his heart. The big and massive, the masterful yet gentle in man had always appealed to Dorothy’s taste; hence probabiy arose her imperviousness to Darcy Derrick’s effeminate beauty, and languishing se- ductiveness. She liked above all things a manly man, and would have preferred even a brute to a milk-sop. Her acquaintance with men was exceedingly limited. During those four years of hand-to-mouth struggle for life which had elapsed since her father’s death, her intercourse with the opposite sex had consisted solely of business inter- views in offices, during the course of which she had early discovered that her personal comeliness was a thing to be regretted, in that it sometimes induced her employers to offer undesirable and swiftly resented attentions, while it never for a moment led them to drive less hard bargains for her artistic work. This discovery it was that, coming as a shock to a sen- sitive and refined girl, full of the illusions of youth, had imparted to her manners that veneer of coldness and pride which had sufficed to keep the art students in awe of her, and which by its unaccustomed piquancy had at- tracted the jaded senses of Darcy Derrick. But the natu- ral Dorothy was neither cold nor unimpressionable; she was, on the contrary, the most womanly creature imagina- ble, to whom loving with whole-souled strength and ten- derness was an absolute necessity. The loss of her sister, who had demanded from her a mother’s care and devo- tion, seemed to have left her life empty and blank. Lbs. (E()