Should She Have Left Him? — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

22 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? point.” He hastened to add, “I do not ask from idle curiosity. I have a purpose as you will soon know.” “YT am not proud of the story,” said Trescotte with a faint air of attempting to be humorous, “nor happy in recalling it to memory. It isa story so much more like the inventions of cheap romancers than an actual happening in real life, and is such a lamemtable showing of my own weakness and absurd youth, that I avoid putting it on exhibition, except when necessary. Were it not supported by incon- trovertible documentary evidence, I would not ex- pect people to believe i.” “Yes, yes,’ interrupted Magrane with fine profes- sional scorn for apologies, “‘ but give me the story.” “ Well,” Trescotte went on, not a little nettled by the lawyer’s manner, “ when I was about twenty-one— nine years ago—TI was in Switzerland where I had fallen in with an American family named Hallock, from Buffalo, consisting of the father and mother, son and daughter. We traveled together. The daughter, whose name was Elsie, and who was a very pretty little girl, was about my own age, and was principally noticeable for her alternation of spirits, either deep depression or reckless gayety. The son was some six or seven years older. There were no love passages between Elsie and myself, nor any attempts on either part. She treated me as she did her brother, frolicked with me when gay, avoided me when depressed. I regarded her merely as a jolly little companion of vacation days. , ComuicldOokkS.c© 3