His Other Wife: A Novel — page 385: what you’re looking at

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

THE LOST IS FOUND. 377 for a little talk with her at twilight on his way home to tea, — but he rarely staid long. Once she said to him, as he moved to go away: | ‘‘Why do you go? Iam so lonely here. You might sometimes give me a whole evening, as in the old days.” ‘It would be pleasant for me,” he said, gravely; ‘‘but these are not the old days, and people might talk of you. You cannot be too careful, and it is better to be lonely than have unpleasant comments. I will come with mother sometimes whenever she can walk so far.” But oftener that he came he would stop at the door of the shop below, and ask Mollie to run up with flowers or fruits to Leda, from his mother. It was true that he did miss her presence from the neat little cottage, as one might miss a great splendid rose from a bed of modest pinks and daisies, but she would have been consumed with wounded vanity had she known how much more freely he breathed the sweet, pure air that no longer was laden with the subtle perfumes that exhaled from her magnificent hair and the clinging folds of her soft black robes. He lingered more at home now that her dark, humid eyes were no longer there to follow his movements; and the placid old face of his mother, in its spotless white cap, was a more soothing and healthful picture for his passing glance to rest on than Leda’s pure oval cheek, with its rich peach bloom, or its alabaster luster. i | He had come to wonder at himself for the old madness i Eomicbooks. (E(0)