Octavia's Pride; or, The Missing Witness — page 272: what you’re looking at

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

262 OCTAVIA’S PRIDE. One day there came a carriage dashing in hot haste up the avenue. : # Felix Thorne sprang out, and lifted from it Octavia Wain- wright, whose face was closely vailed. Her father was nervously on the watch, and knew in a moment what the arrival was. He hurried out of his room, and his daughter, in another moment, flung herself upon his neck. 4 ‘Octavia, my darling, oh, my poor Octavia!” sobbed the old man. ‘‘ How can I tell you all the ruin of our hopes?” She put back her vail, and showed him a grave, pale face, but with a new steady light, that he had never seen before, in the resplendent eyes. ‘‘ Papa, dear papa! there is no ruin. I donot ‘het what you have heard; but lam happier, truer, better worthy to be happier now than I have ever been before.” “¢Oh, my darling! You cannot marry Lord Ronald!” ‘‘ Father, Lord Ronald is dead! The yacht was run into by a steamer at dead of night. Of all that company flung out to the cold waves and the black night, only two were lost—a sailor and Lord Ronald.” ‘The yacht lost! your life in peril!’ he cried, catching her in his arms, and suddenly seeing how small and poor was the loss he had hitherto deplored. ‘‘ Heaven be praised, you are safe!” She clung to him, shuddering with the horror of the re- membrance of a night of terror, and presently gasped, in answer: ‘““It was Felix who saved me. I was by Lord Ronald when the spar fell, and went over with him. Oh papa, don’t ever ask me about it. I came up out of the jaws of death, and my old self died, and was buried there in those roaring waves. Now I shall live another life. I said it before I knew Lord Ronald was lost. I told Felix while yet he upheld me in the water, knowing not whether we were to live or die. I told him then I:had always loved him— -comicbooks. C fo)