Should She Have Left Him? — page 281: what you’re looking at

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

268 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? plained its effect, slyly remarking that organized society could correct its own defects, if one could learn its clumsy machinery. It was with difficulty that Dorothy could grasp the significance of the law, but when she did she looked with such grateful eyes upon Mr. Dayton that the bluff old lawyer was much disturbed. “Qh, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor-Allen in a bored tone, “what uninteresting people you have suddenly become—merely commonplace married people.” : Mr. Dayton cast an indignant glance at the widow, much to the amusement of Mr. Magrane, who had come to know the ingenious expedients to which she resorted to conceal her own emotions. “You perceive, Mrs. Trevor-Allen,” he said; ‘‘that the reason of the animal man does some time serve a purpose.” “Not reason,” she replied pertly, “a little superior knowledge denied the woman by the tyrant man.” But this was not the business that had brought them there, so Mr. Dayton brought them back to their mutton. | “Mrs. Adams and the child are in the adjoining room, he said. “She has consented. It is really the best thing under all the circumstances she could do. She did not yield easily, but she is firm now. I could have told you earlier than I did, but I wanted to pass this law first, and I thought it well that the little woman should first become accus- tomed to the thought of separation before it actually CONnIICOO @ cS (GO)