I Forbid the Banns! — page 267: what you’re looking at

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

ON SHORT SIGHT AND OTHER INFIRMITIES. 257 the man with whom she was conversing—on whom she was smiling. Hehad an impulse to make herclimb to her place on the phaeton, and to drive her away to the Court out of sight of every human being but himself. Again Bertha laughed. Then she said something that caused her companion to laugh. He did not look like a man who was given to laughter or smiles, but now he laughed. The ladies on the lawn looked meaningly at one another, and smiled. He saw them do so, and then his eyes returned to Bertha and her companion. They were beginning to stroll round to where a seat had been made about the trunk of a weeping ash. They were still absorbed in one another. And all the time that he was observing this his friend was droning away about the Rocky Mountains and his marvel- ous escapes from bears. Charlton had become so accus- tomed to associate tergiversation with stories of bears that he had at last come to doubt the truth of the bear story told by David the son of Jesse. Bertha and her companion dis- appeared beneath the shadowy branches of the accommodat- ing ash. , All at once there flashed upon the mind of Julian Charlton the thought: “She ts nothing to me more than any other woman,”’ It was quickly followed by amore disturbing thought still: “*T am nothing to her more than any other man,”’ Where had he heard those words before? He recollected, after a time, that they had come from Mr. Hardy. He had in substance said, ‘‘I pity you when you see her by the side of some other man and reflect that she is bound to you by no tie.’’ Was it possible that that middle-aged man, who had no claim to be regarded as a gentleman, had displayed wisdom in this prophecy of his? (C(O) CORNIELIOOKS