[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
"MY BRIDE OR THE BRIDE OF DEATH!"
"And like Communists, as mad, as disloyal,
My fierce emotions roam out of their lair;
They hate King Reason for being loyal,
They would fire his castle and burn him there.
O, Love, they would clasp you, and crush you, and kill you,
In the insurrection of control....
And there is no fear, and hell has no terror
To change or alter a love like mine."—E. W. W.
Precious hastened to the nearest milliner's from Madame La Mode's, and having matched the ribbons desired, sent them by messenger to the modiste. Her plausible errand thus dispatched, she covered her lovely face and hair with a thick black lace veil, and hastened to the address Ethel had given her, eager to dispatch her mission of kindness, and to get away as soon as possible from the poverty-stricken and unfamiliar neighborhood. She was as dainty as a princess, our pretty Precious, and could not help finding poverty repulsive.
So her aristocratic little nose was quite high in the air as she stepped across the threshold of the vile-smelling tobacco shop, and approaching a parchment-faced, bewigged old woman, much bent with age, queried timorously:
"Does Hetty Wilkins live here?"
The old shopwoman eyed her closely through immense goggle glasses, then answered gruffly:
"Certainly she lives here; but you beant the young gal she wore expectin'. She had black eyes and hair."