Should She Have Left Him? — page 243: what you’re looking at

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

DOROTHY’S SACRAMENTS. 237 Beestonmy would have been shocked and saddened, is, I think, made very clear. That she should contrast Hilda’s position and her own was natural. The little cloud that had rested upon her own happiness put forward its claims for consideration—that cloud which Mrs. Trevor-Allen had said was of her own making—the jealousy she had permitted to take sway and erect that intangible something between herself and herhusband. Under the guidance of this thought she traveled gently and by degrees to the second subject of her meditations. She admitted that in entertaining the unworthy thought she had justified Mrs. Trevor-Allen’s up. braiding. Even when she tried to excuse herself in the love she bore Trescotte and her desire to be everything to him,she was compelled to confess that littleness and selfishness had been at the bottom of her weakness. Bending over the babe sleep- ing so peacefully and trying to trace on that infantile face the lineaments of its father, and con- trasting the love, tenderness, and nobility of that father with the vice, brutality, and ignominy of Hilda’s husband, she vowed to dismiss all vestige of such weakness and be worthy herself and the man, the love of whom had rescued her from her sister's fate. In this vow was the third sacrament of her life—a sacrament as holy as any at churchly altar, or under priestly hands—a sacrament, the influences of which were dignifying and evolutionary. Perhaps it was the association of ideas that brought to her mind Mrs. Adams and her passionate Comicbooks.€© 3}