Should She Have Left Him? — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

CHANGING THE TACTICS. 97 known how much, doubtless she would have dilated at length upon it, but as it was, she said enough to send Dorothy into weighing the duty she owed Trescotte against that which she owed her family. And so no conclusion was reached on either side—that is, that was accepted by the other. Mrs. Courtenay refused to receive as conclusive Dorothy’s expressed determination to remain with Trescotte, and Dorothy refused to accept as con- clusive, her mother’s assertion that it was her duty to return to her father’s house. All the time this discussion was going forward Trescotte sat in the library making futile efforts to read the book in his hands. His thoughts con- stantly reverted to the sweet little woman above him going through the ordeal she had so much dreaded, and who was battling for the right to re- main in companionship with him. He would gladly have taken this burden upon his own shoulders, but he knew that his presence would but increase her difficulties, and for the sake of her own future happiness with him, she must battle to the end, un- influenced by him, or by any appearance of coercion on his part. As sad and heart-breaking as separa- tion would be to him now, he yet felt that if there was a lingering doubt in Dorothy’s mind as to the course she was pursuing, and if she could therefore be swayed and influenced by the appeals now being made to her, it were better for both of them that she should yield now. If she did not, and passed through the ordeal yet firm and staunch in her Comicloeo® SS C@© 3}