The Illegal Marriage — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

36 THE ILLEGAL MARRIAGE. an hour to two with Louise, now a young woman of nearly twenty-five. Cecy found William Stannard much shaneed from what he was when she went away, and was often inclined to resent his distant manner toward her. He was too scrupulously polite and respectful for one who had known her in youth, and toward one so intimate with his family as she had been. “He might treat me with more cordiality,” she thought, “even if he cannot love me. My intimacy with his mother and sister ought to make him do that.” She little knew the real feelings of his heart—as little understood why it was that he seemed to re- pulse her growing fondness for him. Piqued at last by his studied politeness and courtesy, she began to visit less at his house; but before her absence was really observed to be volun- tary, Mrs. Stannard and Louise had determined to spend the winter with a relative in New Orleans. Cecy wept bitterly when she heard the news, for now she would be cut off from him entirely, and could never even see him unless he chose to call on her. But she concealed her grief as she went to see her friends off, and came back with a void in her heart that she had never felt before. Although she did not know it then, the parting of that day was a long one; for during the winter Louise was married, and in the early spring Mrs. Stannard died. William Stannard now lived alone in the home which had become his own, and although he often called on Cecy, he never seemed cordial to her. There was a restraint about him for which she yainly tried to assign a reason. He was too formal Eomicbooks:.co