Her Faithful Knight — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

64 A Ruined Life. pectedly a few days after I had been left behind, declar- ing that he was going back to ‘the only woman who had every really loved him.’ “*Of course, we all thought it was you,’ pursued Miss Mongomery, ‘though he is a regular Don Juan, I must say! It was me had the sending off of him chiefly. The more I thought about you, the more I felt you were speaking the truth when you and I had that flare-up, and that you really didn’t know he was married to Millie Clements on a‘singing tour in America three years ago. You were so stuck up in the dressing-room, and so close about your affairs, that mobody told you anything. But when he left you behind like that, we all thought it pretty mean of Trevelyan, and as I’m never too particular what I say, I slanged him before the whole company on the stage one night when he was trying to make up to me, and let him know what I though of him for his treatment of you. Next day he was gone, without so much as giv- ing notice or asking for his week’s salary, and not one of us has heard anything of him since. [I rather think I ‘made my gentleman ashamed of himself. And do you really mean to tell me he didn’t go back to you after all?’ “Any flicker of hope I might have had, and it could only have been a very little, died right out of my heart while she was speaking, and it seemed as though the very bitterness of death passed over me. She wanted to help me, but I hardly heard her. I just remember thanking her, and telling her that I required no assistance and was going back to my home and my friends. Then, before she could stop me, I left her and ran away along the tow- ing path. By the arches of the bridge a rough group of watermen were talking and laughing loudly. You know what a coward I have always been, Dolly, and how I would always rather run a mile than face a drunken man. I turned away from the river and crawled up the stone (S@) GEOmiIGdoo <S}