His Other Wife: A Novel — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

150 A SISTER .OF .CHARITY. heart relented from its stern purpose of repressing her interest. It was only a simple thing enough that she pro- posed; and, with his mother present, and her husband's \countenance of her act, there could not surely be any harm. Besides, the days were long and tedious, and. he was weary of the dull confinement; and this lovely woman, with her rich, melodious voice, and wondrous soft charm, could shed a harmless luster through at least one hour of the aimless invalid days, till he could move about again. Perhaps, too, suffering had weakened his faculties so much as to render him incapable of a sustained effort. He closed his eyes languidly, and said : ‘“‘As you pleasé, madam. I am forbidden to talk much, but I believe there is no injunction against my listening.” ‘‘] do not mean to tax your mental digestion with any very strong food, you see,” said Leda, opening the pages of a novelette, and beginning to read aloud. The spicy odors and fragrance of lime blossoms from the sunny garden were blown through the open window into the pretty little room; and the drowsy hum of labor- ing bees mingled with the low and sweetly modulated tones of the beautiful reader. There was a soft, dream- like charm in it all to the enfeebled senses of the invalid. Even the living and splendid beauty of the woman before him, on whose ravishingly suffused face his eyes rested, seemed a part of some bright phantasmagoria, seen ”% Eomicbooks. co