Should She Have Left Him? — page 277: what you’re looking at

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

364 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? poetic license cannot convert a dirty smokestack and a thumping screw into the wings of a bird. And of all this no one had knowledge in this country save Hilda. But Buttontrave did not come on wings nor any- thing else. On the day he should have sailed the aged Duke of Somersfield, his father, after a brief iliness not considered dangerous, died, and the suc- cession to the estates and the titles delayed him, as he instantly cabled to Hilda. But he begged her to go to London, where, he urged, they might be quietly married and take up that life of joy and happiness they had promised themselves. Hilda, her expectations a little dashed, sat down to think earnestly over this proposition. ecomniclooouks (GO)