Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

APPREHENSIONS ta disgorge. But with me it is very different. I have no more than I know what to do with, and if I were to give up my share I should be a ruined man. Indeed, it was only to keep the woman quiet and enable her to have enough to live upon, that I have allowed her this four hundred a year for alittle time past. I was fearful that uf she fell into poverty she might begin talking to people of the transaction of that marriage, and thus one thing might. have led on to another, resulting in the fullest exposure. But I repeat that if I am called upon to refund, I may as well go and drown my- self afterward.” ‘“ Besides, the exposure, the disgrace, the damning in- famy!” ejaculated Lord Petersfield. ‘ Would to God I had never done it! ”’ “Ah! you were something like myself in those times, my lord,” said Marston, bitterly; ‘‘ too fond of the gaming- table.”’ “And Lady Petersfield,’ continued the nobleman, not heeding the baronet’s acerbic interjection. ‘“‘ What a blow for her! She who suspects it not; she who has not an idea of all this! And with her diabolical temper too— Why, it will be enough to make me blow my brains out.”’ ‘A pretty couple we shall be, then,’ said Marston, with that bitter, mocking laugh in which despair sometimes breaks forth. “ I to drown mvself, you to blow your brains out! But what is to be done? It is no use your walking up and down the room like this. Pray resume some of your diplomatic cunning as soon as ever you like. The sooner, too, the better. Fortunately we know where Elizabeth is, ~ ata cottage near Edmonton. The report in the Dover news- paper lets us know that much. Now, then, decide. Shall we lock her up in a madhouse? Or shall we do that other thing, you know what I mean? ”’ “Do not allude to it, Sir John Marston!” replied Lord Petersfield, impatiently. ‘ I am not so bad as that.’’ “ But l am bad enough for anything,” exclaimed Marston, “ under such circumstances. I tell you what, Petersfield, an idea has struck me! Let you and I go and lay in wait in the neighbourhood of her residence, and when she comes out, we will shoot her dead. If you are afraid to fire the pistol, | am not. Then we will swear she tried to rob us, and the respectability of your name, your high position, CONnNIEOOOKS (S(O)