Marion Marlowe's True Heart, or, How a Daughter Forgave — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

14 Miss Allyn drew herself up slowly and looked around. “So it is all over, my dream of love,”’ she said, very Slowly. “Well, I guess I’ve got spunk enough*to pull me through. Where’s that looking-glass, Dollie. I want to smash the pieces.” That was the last the girls heard of Miss Allyn’s love affair. Her lover’s name was buried in oblivion from that very moment. If Miss Allyn grieved for him, she did not show it, but, if anything, she became a trifle more sad and pessimistic. * “It would have killed me, I know,” Dollie told Marion in confidence. “Why, if Ralph should deceive me, I’d commit suicide, I’m certain.” “Well, then, you’d be a little goose, that’s all I’ve got to say,” was Marion’s answer. “Why, any one would think to hear you, Dollie, that Ralph was the only man in the gy” world worth having. “Sometimes I think he is,” said Dollie, complacently. Her faith in her lover was something that passed comprehension. That evening both Dollie and Miss Allyn went out, Dollie with her lover and Miss AI- lyn on business. As Marion seated herself in a big arm-chair in the semi-darkness, she looked around their little home with a sigh of genuine pleasure. ‘ “T almost hate to leave it,’’ she said aloud. “Tt is so sweet, so homelike and so beautiful- ly cosy.”’ There was a peal of the bell just at that very moment, which was so shrill that it brought her to her feet in a second. “Our thought as she went to look for the door opener, “but everything looks cosy even if callers are coming early,” she we are not all settled. } : : ” “T am looking for Miss Viarion Marlowe. said a voice on the stairs as Marion stepped out into the hall. MY QUEEN. “I have been to her old address and they sent me here. I wonder, if I should find her, if she would be willing to see me?” Marion’s laugh rippled out merrily at this naive request, and she held out her hand cordially to her unexpected caller. “I am delighted to see you, Dr. Brookes,” she said, smiling, “but I am very sorry that both my friend and my sister are absent this evening. They would both have stayed at home if we had known you were coming.” “Oh, I am not so difficult to entertain as all that,” was the jolly answer. “One young lady at a time is enough, I find, Miss Mar- lowe. I am not so piggish as to want a dozen.” | “They say there is safety in a multitude,” said Marion, slyly. “No danger of falling in love when there are plenty of them. It’s the monopoly of one that proves fatal, they tell me.” “So you think falling in love a fatality, do you?” asked the young man, quickly. “Well, if that is the case, I confess that I’m a fatal- ist.” | “It has fatal consequences, I have discov- ered,” said Marion, half sadly, “although I must admit that I‘speak from observation and not experience.” “A confession that I am glad to hear you make, Miss Marlowe,” said her caller almost seriously; “for most of the women that men meet nowadays are either just recovering from some heart malady or at the actual crisis of the disease, or else, what is worse, they have so thoroughly recovered from some immune violent attack as to render them from ever having another.” “Poor things! I pity them,” said Marion, laughing, “but I can fancy that none of the three classes would afford very desirable com- panions, Still, we ate all liable to infection of that kind,” she added, as she offered him GEomichooks. com : 1S