His Other Wife: A Novel — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

16 SLEEPING BEAUTY. here was the harbinger of doom and sorrow to two help- less darlings of fortune, now to learn for the first time what want and privation could do to enervated natures that had never learned to endure. Growing restive under this thought, he sounded the alarm impatiently, and was admitted by a stately old negress into the dim _hall-way, and thence shown into a suite of rooms on the left side of the vestibule. At the entrance of these the dusky guide left him to take his card to Mrs. Morgan. Heated by his rapid walk, Warren experienced a deli- cious sense of refreshment as he glanced down the length of these chambers, all opening together through archways supported on gray marble columns, and draped with lace curtains. The neutral tints of the walls deepened still more the tender shadows of the fading day, and the figures of statuary stood out in spectral distinctness here and there against their surrounding of sober-hued furniture, Presently, as his sight grew accustomed to the dimness, he discerned, through soft tones of roseate light that stole in from the crevices of the western windows, an object that startled his sensuous interest keenly. This was the form of a woman lying at full length upon a gorgeous tiger-skin on the floor of the end room. She seemed to be fast asleep. The face was turned toward him, and rested on a bare arm that was curled, in the fashion of a sleepy kitten’s, under her head. An open book lay beside her; she had lapsed from its pages into her siesta. Almost unconsciously the young man. had drawn nearer, and Eomicbooks.¢o