The Illegal Marriage — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

8 THE ILLEGAL MARRIAGE. his eyes looked vacantly out upon the indistinct garden. Kancy had carried away his soul. A vis- ion had come to him—a vision of the sweet girl he loved, whose lovely dark eyes seemed to be looking at him then, and whose fair face, surrounded by a halo of light, was perfectly visible to him. Cecilia Morgan! Beautiful Cecy Morgan! Why had she come to haunt him now, when nearly over- powered in his struggle to forget her? Had he not given her up to another? Had he not long known that his was a hopeless love? Had he not fought hard to crush the affection for her that he must not express? Of the love that nearly conquered him he was now thinking, and she was ever there to make his struggle all the harder. It was useless; he loved her still—loved her truly and fondly, but he could never call her—wife. Often enough he had brooded over this, and had tried to make himself believe that he was reconciled to her loss; but he knew now that he had made a failure. He loved her still, and knew now that he should always love her, as man loves but once in his life. But this was misery now since she was betrothed to another. “She is there,” he said, aloud, stretching his arms toward the creek, beyond which Cecy Morgan lived with her father. “She is there, so near me, and yet sofaraway. The distance is widening between us, Henceforth I can be nothing to her.” What comfort it would have been to this lonely, suffering gentleman could he have passed the dis- tance between him and the girl he loved, and stood invisible in one small chamber there! At that mo- ment Cecy Morgan was kneeling beside her bed, Eomicbooks (Ele)