Stella Rosevelt — page 395: what you’re looking at

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

REHEARSING THE PAST. 389 unfortunate victims and Miss Richards the other. Did you not read the description which followed that notice?” ‘‘No; I read nothing but those horrible words, which told me of my own injustice, and that you and I would be parted forever. They burned themselves into my brain as if they had been branded there with a hot iron, and I cared to read no more.” ‘‘If you had,” he returned, ‘‘you would have been unde- ceived; but I was very angry when I saw how the affair had been published, and if I could ascertain who wrote it up, I should be tempted to chastise the writer severely.” Star was weeping now; great, glad tears of joy chased each other over her cheeks, and she did not resist him when he drew her into his arms again, wiping with his own hands the glitter- ing drops as they fell, while in low, tender tones he told her all about the strange events which had conspired to separate them for so long. ‘*Will you forgive me, Archie? I was very hard upon you, but I was nearly mad with my misery that night when I refused to listen to you,” Star said, when the story was ended. ‘‘Forgive you, my own? ‘This moment compensates for everything. How were you to know that a titled relative had died, making me his heir, and changing or adding to my name? I was.indeed Archibald Sherbrooke, bound for Amer- ica, to travel and study art there, when we went on that steamer. I merely dropped the ‘Sir’ lest you should be shy of me. I did indeed know of the change in my circumstances when I next saw you in the station in New York, but in my fear of losing you, I resolved not to tell you until I had won you, feeling afraid that you, in your modesty, would refuse to Lord Carrol the love you would perhaps give to Archibald Sherbrooke. I never suspected, when I accepted Mrs. Rich-~- ards invitation to visit her, that I was going into the very house where my own love dwelt. I had paid Miss Josephine some (Eo) GOmMmiGcdooks