A Silver Brand — page 214: what you’re looking at

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

206 ee A SILVER BRAND. a secret door formed by the swinging open of the whole panel against which the portrait hung. It closed after them noiselessly. Aubrey’s taper showed him a narrow corridor, walled on either side, cobweb hung and damp with mold. Every short distance there was a short flight of descending steps. He noticed a burned match tracking the pathway, and looked again wonderingly into that face which he now perceived held marks still of extraordinary beauty. . ‘‘Yes,” she said, in that careful undertone, “I came alone, with only the faint flicker of a match to guide me, a path I have not trodden for nearly twenty years. Oh, the change—the change! Little did he guess, my Arnold, when he led my playful steps through the secret passage, way whose existence was so carefully concealed in what sori. strait it would serve me. Ah, to think, to think how gayly I tripped over these damp stones, dreaming nothing of the horrors and woes that were coming. And how ten- derly he supported my steps, and how proudly assured me that I shared a knowledge that only the Schwarzenberg barons learned when they came into possessionseof their rights here. Alas, alas! is it a terrible dream, all the horrors that have filled up these terrible years? Shall I wake, indeed, and find him with me again? You are so like him—sgo like him !” ‘So like whom, madam? I pray you explain to me what you mean, and who you are before I go with you any turther.” “Tam Lady Pauline, the wronged Baroness of Schwar- zenberg, and you are like my murdered husband, Arnold, baron and lord of this fair isle and its surroundings.” “They told me you were dead,” ejaculated Aubrey, in profound astonishment. “Iam sure that the Baron Val- entin believes you dead.” _ “JT know he does, and all the world besides. I have been buried all these years, hidden away, my child torn from me. Oh, my sufferings and my wrongs are too great to be credible to Christian ears! And yet it is Heaven’s truth I tell you. I have escaped his power, once, twice, as by a very miracle, and even now his hirelings watch on all sides. But I have risked everything to come hither, and I have secured the treasure hidden here for so many years. And Ihave found you. Surely I need not fear to trust the rest to Heaven’s mercy, although danger waits me behind, and before, and encompasses me on every side. (Elo) GComicbooks