His Other Wife: A Novel — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

88 RACHEL’S COMMANDS. approach of womanhood. Nothing fairer, or brighter, or more glad could be imagined, than this slender, dainty, star-eyed girl. So lovingly had she been sheltered from all the cares of life, so utterly unbiassed by social con- ventionalities, of which she knew nothing, that she was like a free and happy bird that flutters round the parent nest, taking no thought or care for the morrow. . One morning when she went as usual to join Uriel at his work among the little flower-beds in the back garden, she found him not. «Surely he cannot be asleep after sunrise!” she said, for she knew that he rose with the lark. She ran to his room to see if he had returned thither for any purpose; the door was closed, and all was quiet within. She returned softly, and there sat Uriel in his old leathern chair beside a little table, on which the lamp still burned. An unfinished letter lay open under his hand, his arm lay motionless on the other side of it, his head reclined upon the rusty cushion, and Faith said, laughing : : ‘The dear old father has written himself to sleep. I'll wake him with a kiss.” | She bent her rosy mouth upon his forehead, and started from the touch of him with a shriek of pain and fear. The old man would never wake to hers nor any mortal’s touch again. He was quite dead. ire aie. t 2K * * en ke x Rachel and her child were now alone in the world, the GComichoo Ss. (E(0) =|