Stella Rosevelt — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

f 174. “WHY HAS HE DONE THIS THING?” ~ of her, so that she need never know the meaning of the words poor and dependent again; and now, with all this evidence before her, how could she help believing him false to the core— to have simply amused himself at her expense? ‘‘You can have no defense to offer me, and | will hear nothing,” she returned, coldly. ‘‘ You have deceived me most cruelly; you came to me as Archibald Sherbrooke; you used all your powers of fascination to make me love you as a poor artist, while you had already played the part of a rich lover ina different character at a fashionable watering-place. I congratu- late you upon your marvelous success as an actor, my lord,” she concluded, with scathing sarcasm. A deep sigh broke from him; her words hurt him min for he was very proud. But he saw how she was suffering, and he tried to be patient with her, feeling sure that if he could only make her listen to him all would be well. ‘‘ My dear,” he said, gently, ‘‘you do not understand. Pray, let me tell you all about it. I swear that I am both ‘“You need not swear; I know enough already. Go back to my more fortunate cousin, Miss Richards, whom the whole household expects you intend to make Lady Carrol. She, I own, is better fitted to be the bride of a peer of England than the poor alien who is a burden upon her bounty. She will grace your proud home and name with her beauty; she will add to your riches with her wealth. But let me tell you “— ‘and Star had no idea how superbly beautiful she was as she stood so proudly before him and uttered this prophetic sen- tence—‘‘that the girl whom she has despised and insulted, whom you have deceived, and whose life you have blighted by your treachery, will yet rise to a position that shall shame and humiliate you both. Go back to her, I say, and—ask her for the cameo which you gave me. I told you that I had lost it. [ put it that way because I did not like to tell you how badly I Eomicbooks. co