Lady Evelyn — page 236: what you’re looking at

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

oe de i He oats BE the Gypsies eee ag of fair y woman’s face and blue eyes ; ee he, in his turn, loved the Spanish donna. “He was the darling of the gods; they all adored him— the women—old and young, for his beauty and his bright- ness, while I hated him as I hated the devil: and his cousin, Gerald Desmond, hated him still more. Don’t drop your pen and stare! I know Gerald Desmond is Earl of Clontarf to-day, and your friend, very likely; but for all that, he is the most infernal villain out of “My good man! my good man!” interposed the rector in horror. “Well, don’t cry out before you’re hurt. He is, though, for all that. At last I got Kathleen’s father completely in my power, and I used that power without mercy. I| drove her half. wild with fear. She was in blank despair, too, at the approaching nuptials of Lord Roderick and Donna Inez, and, in very desperation, she consented at last to be my wife. But after that promise she met him— she loved him as devotedly as ever. I was mad with jealousy, and I had very good cause. One day I met her in a lonely wgodland place, on the banks of a narrow river. We called it the boundary stream. I charged her with her falsity to me—her love for Roderick Desmond. She could not deny it—she gloried in it. ““*T have loved him all my life—I will love him till lig die!’ were her words. ‘I do not want to be your wife. If you possess one spark of manliness, you will set me free. I tell you, as your wife, | v.11 still love him. I would die for him—my beautiful darling!’ “Were these words not enough to madden any one? I seized a sharp-pointed stone, that the devil himself seemed to have laid ready to my hand, and, in a paroxysm of fury, I struck her on the temple and hurled her headlong into the stream. She sank like a stone. Oh, God! I see her face now, as she looked her last on me—a smile on her lips, her eyes bright with her love for him. I left the accursed spot. I was cool and calm enough then. I went straight to her father’s cottage and asked for her. She had been absent all day, he said, he knew not where. Search was made. One of the village officials went straight to the spot. It was an old haunt of hers, and there we came upon Lord Roderick Desmond drawing the dead body out of the water. I flew into a AS of rage—_ fe) ones m