Stella Rosevelt — page 393: what you’re looking at

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

REHEARSING THE PAST. 387 A mocking laugh, which, however, was full of misery, rang through the room. Lord Carrol looked back and saw Josephine, her face almost convulsed with pain and passion, passing out. ‘“Don't think that it is going to beall clear sailing even now, my proud, spirited lord, for I will spoil it all if I can.” “Come,” he murmured, gently turning again to Star, and paying no heed to those threatening words. He drew her unresisting hand within his arm, and led her through the conservatory out upon a covered porch at the rear. This porch was more like a room, for during the winter it was inclosed with glass windows, and, being heated with steam, formed a part of the hot-house. He placed the fair girl in a chair in a secluded corner, and then he knelt down before her. He took her hands again and drew them to his breast, where she could feel the great heart-throbs which made his strong frame quiver like a tree struck by the woodman’s ax. ‘*My darling,” he said again, ‘‘I have seen Mr. Rosevelt, and he told me that you were here, I have been looking for you everywhere during the last fifteen minutes. Dearest, you © will let me defend myself now, will you not? You will not turn away from me—you will not spoil both our lives by again driving me from you, believing me to be a ‘traitor and coward?’ ” Star shivered. Those words smote her with terrible pain; but her heart had been bounding with new hope since he had so sternly confronted Josephine Richards and proclaimed her assertion a lie. She could not comprehend it, for she had read the notice of their marriage with her own eyes. Yet she instinctively trusted him, and it was so sweet, after all the miserable past, to have Ebooks =) (E(@) (Elo)