His Other Wife: A Novel — page 304: what you’re looking at

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

296 MISTRESS AND MAID. race, she could have fallen upon no device so sure of | accomplishing this end as her solemn summons to the megress to meet her at the awful day of doom and reckoning. One evening, about twilight, Roxana entered her mis- tress’ room, bearing a small silver tray with a cup of tea upon it. ‘‘My chile, you must take this for your headache,” said the old woman, placing the tea upon a table at Leda’s side. | Mechanically the pale, statuesque woman lifted her face from the nerveless hand on which it leaned, and drank the refreshing beverage without a word. A strange metamorphosis had taken place in the proud, imperious, queenly mistress of Lucerne. A dumb dejec- tion had fallen upon her haughty spirit, and all the fire in her once passionate face had died out, leaving it cold, and and white, and almost expressionless. There had been visible waste in the voluptuous curves of her grand form, for her dress, that formerly fitted like wax to her faultless figure, now lay over it loosely, and exposed the ravages that it had suffered during weeks of close confinement and mental torture. To a vain, proud woman like Leda, the humiliation that had so publicly fallen upon her destiny would alone have been enough to blight and sear her nature; but, added to this, was the devouring anguish of having for- ever lost the only man who had ever wakened her selfish Eomicbooks.¢o 3