Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

34 ALFRED DE ROSANN. Rosann was doomed to experience. One thing we must, however, mention: the moment it was generally rumoured that the unhappy young man was certain to be found guilty and to be condemned to a very severe punishment, Mrs. Clayton deemed it her duty —a severe one, which maternal prudence, and per- haps selfishness, obliged her, she thought, to perform —to forbid Eloise to consider herself as any longer engaged to De Rosann. In vain the heroic girl, with tears in her eyes, threw herself at her mother’s feet, and implored a reversion of this sad sentence—1n vain did her uncle eloquently plead in behalf of the lovers, and endeavour to impress upon Mrs. Clayton’s mind that it was neither humane nor generous to desert the poor youth at a moment when sorrows bowed him down to the earth, and when the rest of the world forsook him—and notwithstanding she believed, nay —was convinced in her own mind, as well as her brother-in-law and her almost heart-broken daughter, that De Rosann was innocent of the dreadful crime laid to his charge, Mrs. Clayton was still firm in her resolves not to suffer Eloise to regard him as her fu- ture husband, unless he were fully acquitted in the face of the world by a jury of his countrymen. The eventful day of the trial dawned ; and numer- ous were the hopes and fears in the minds of the few who were any way interested as to the fate of Al- fred de Rosann. The court was crowded to excess; the accused manifested a degree of firmness which as- tonished those who had heard or read of his agitation and terror on the morning of his arrest; and when his counsel rose to defend him, a pin might have been heard to fall on the oaken floor of the hall, in which the tribunal sate, at the Palais de Justice. De Rosann’s counsel entered at considerable length upon the affairs of his client. He described the negligence of which the accused had been guilty in con- ducting his business—the investigation of his cireum- stances, which took place in compliance with the ju- dicious counsel given by an old friend of his late COMNICLOOKS.E©