Stella Rosevelt — page 376: what you’re looking at

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

370 A CRUSHING BLOW. A mist comes over her eyes; her heart drops like a thing of lead in her bosom. In an instant a suspicion of the truth flashed upon her. Had she done her lover an irreparable wrong? she asked herself, with a feeling of despair. Had she driven him from her, taunting him with treachery and cowardice, and refusing to listen to his defense, when perhaps he had the best in the world to offer her? Oh! if she had but heeded Mr. Rosevelt when he begged her to let him see him and learn the reason of his mysterious conduct. Oh! if she had only answered that advertisement and allowed him to come to her as he had entreated. She had been cruel, unjust, wicked; and now it was too late to atone for it. She felt as if bands of ice were being bound about her heart —as if coals of fire were heaped upon her brain, and branded upon it, in letters which would haunt her till her dying hour, those two names, Sir Archibald Sherbrooke and Lord Carrol, of Carrolton. Familiar as she was with English customs, she could under- stand readily enough how he had become possessed of them, and it was so strange that she had never thought of it before. In all her suffering upon learning, as she had supposed, that she had been betrayed, she had never endured pain like this; and, with her sight failing, her senses reeling, without sound or warning, she slipped from her chair to the floor, where she lay white and still in a lifeless heap at Jacob Rosevelt’s feet. Eomichbooks-Go