Thrice Wedded, but Only Once a Wife — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

152 THRICE WEDDED. as being really better than I am,” he said, searching her face closely, and with a rather remorseful tone. “(I know I can,” she answered, confidently. “But should I happen to do something, between this and the time that I could effect your escape, that seemed to you most unworthy—tbat.would merit perhaps your sternest dis- approbation—what then?” She looked at him for a moment, with a puzzled air, then smilingly replied: ‘If you should—if I should be very, very much displeased with you for anything you might do, still I should feel that there was some good in you—that you were noble and kind at heart—and I should not fear to trust you.” JT thank you, and bless you for your words. I feel them more deeply than I can express,” returned Ralph, the tears_ actually springing to his eyes at so much trust and confi- dence. He pressed her little hand reverently, and enias foot- steps approaching, he hastily left her, saying he would see her again, and passed on to his room, sadder and more dis- satisfied with himself than he had ever been in his life. He was not all bad, as she had said. There was a germ of truth and goodness within his heart which, if nourished — and tended in the sunshine of purity and love, might yet bloom with beauty and fragrance. + CHAPTER XXVH. ‘¢T AM ONE OF THEM.’’ Early on the morning of the same day on which Ralphim- parted his diabolical design to our heart-broken heroine, two men sat in the room back of the one which was occu- pied by Squire Moulton and his nephew, at the inn before spoken of. We recognize them at once—one as its former occupant, Ronald Edgerton, who now sits without his previous disguise; and the other as Fredrich Weimher, Dora’s former pes: and lover. The latter had only a few days before returned fant his foreign tour, and immediately on arriving, his first inquiry = had been for his old friend, Robert Ellerton. Comicbooks.co