Stella Rosevelt — page 194: what you’re looking at

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

188 MALICIOUS FALSEHOODS. CHAPTER XIX, MALICIOUS FALSEHOODS. As soon as Mr. Richards and his distinguished guest left the music-room, a white hand parted the curtains from the window, and a blanched, distorted face appeared in the aperture. It belonged to Mrs. Richards, who had, as before mentioned, been a listener to all that had transpired. Seeing that no one was in sight, she stepped softly inside, for the window was a long one, reaching to the floor, and sank back into a chair, the picture of a woman whom a fierce passion had exhausted. She had chanced to be out upon the veranda when Lord Carrol had entered the music-room and requested a ‘“‘ few moments’ conversation” with her husband, and feeling, witha thrill of delight, that the most important moment of Josephine’s life had come, she drew near to listen, as she supposed, to his lordship’s proposal for her hand. Her emotions can better be imagined than described when instead she heard the story which the young man told her husband, and learned that Star, the despised and neglected waif, had secured the prize which she had so coveted for her brilliant daughter. A perfect tornado of wrath, jealousy, and hate raged within her heart as she heard his praises of her, and his manly con- fession of love for her, with the intention of making her his wife. Star, the beggar maid, as she had always regarded her, the burden reproach of her life, the wife of a peer of England! It could not be; she would not have it so, when she had plotted and schemed to win this proud, handsome young aris- EComilcbooks.co