Her Faithful Knight — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

36 The Wanderer’s Return. At the point the writer paused and looked up quickly, listening intently. Of course it must only be fancy, she told herself. And yet it seemed as though her own name, uttered in faint, wailing accents, hung upon the night air. The sound died away. Miss Knight decided that she was tired and nervous, and that her imagination was play- ing her tricks as she settled herself to her letter again. “T told you in my last that I had some work promised me on the Morning Illustrated on the strength of some pen-and-ink drawings of street scenes I took up to the office. They suggested that I should send in some sketches of the costumes worn in ‘The Hermit’ the new | play at the Grassmarket Theatre, produced to-night. Well, I did the work, and it was very interesting. I will tell you all about it in another letter. But, as I know you are always more interested in anything approaching a ro- mance than in serious subjects, I will get on to what hap- pened when I left the theatre after the third act, as the principal characters did not change their dresses in the fourth. Close to the entrance some horrid, tipsy young men tried to prevent me from passing. I had my old serge gown on and a thick, black veil, but I suppose my portfolio showed these polished gentlemen that I was a working girl; and in any case ladies of education and re- finement are not expected to be abroad at night in our highly civilized capital without being insulted. But quite suddenly, as I was growing desperately frightened and mad, a guardian angel in evening dress and a light over- coat swooped down, dismissed my persecutors with a wave of his magic walking-stick, and lo! I was marching ~ along Piccadilly, arm-in-arm with a gentleman who ad- dressed me by name, but whom I had never before spoken pee one other than my big fellow-student at the Mu- seum,’ Eomichooks (S@)