Her Faithful Knight — page 330: what you’re looking at

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

326 Darcy Finds His Wife. had felt convinced that Aylmer’s enmity and disdaifi’pro- ceeded from a personal source, and, acting on that: hint alone, he had brought about the capture of the woman who stood between him and ten thousand a year. Truly Darcy’s star was in the ascendant. - At Ashgrove road Aylmer had the questions, the terror and the excited reproaches of his womankind to meet and to allay. But the sight of the woman he would have laid down his life to protect borne away from his house a prisoner affected him so terribly that, regardless of his aunt’s voluble inquiries, he locked himself into his study and ignored all feminine tappings and quaverings through the keyhole. | So poor Mrs. Read had to go to bed with “one of her headaches,” brought on by baffled curiosity, leaving the elucidation of the mystery in the hands of Rosa, who, by dint of running noisily up to her room and then creep- ing down into the hall and waiting there on a chair for four hours and a half for any sound of movement from the study, succeeded in waylaying Aylmer as he left the room to turn the lights out in the hall. At sight of his cousin he started and looked displeased. “What in the world are you sitting up for?” he asked sharply. “Oh, Aylmer, don’t be cross and horrid. I’m so dread- fully sleepy! But I was so anxious about dear Dolly that I simply couldn’t go to bed. Now, why don’t you tell me all the truth? I’m awfully fond of her and wouldn’t dream of going against her. And perhaps I can tell you something, too. When I went around to St. Ann’s, just before dinner, a man followed me, and would persist in talking to me, and, as I remember now, asking a heap of questions about the people in this house. Of course, I was furious, and did all I could to get rid of CORnniclaoo® S C@