Angelina: Or, The Mystery of St. Mark's Abbey — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

6 ANGELINA $ OR, cousin befere her arrival, and to caution her to keep their visit to the ruins of St. Mark’s Abbey, and the mysterious adventure they had met aun there, a secret from Arthur and his wife. Fortunately, Laura, on recovering her senses, had made her way to the cot- tage of Dame Gertrude, to shelter herself from the storm, and Angelina encoun- tered her, therefoe, just before she arrived at home. It was not without many entreaties on the part of Angelina, that Laura could be indaced to remain ailent upon what they had seen in the rains, but, at length, Angelina prevailed upon her although she had already detailed evorything to Dame Gertrude. whose loquacity and extreme love ial the marvellous, made her listen to the story with delight, CHAPTER ITI. , | 1525 Our narrative commences about the year 3098, at which period the town of Redcar, in Yorkshire, was quite notorious for smugglers and dealers in alt kinds of contraband goods. Not far from this place, and in one of the most delightful parts of that romantic county, at the time we mention, stood the small but neat cottage of Mr. Wood- field, who, as well as his family, which consisted only of himseif, his dame, one daughter, and Angelina, bis niece, had excited considerable interest and cerio- sity since they had resided in the neighbourhood, (a period of about three years), but to the vexation of the inquisitive and the scandal loving, Mr. Wood- field, and the members of his family were so reserved in their manners upon the subject of their former life, that very little could be elicited of their history It was merely known that Woodfield had formerly been a sea-faring man, but in what capacity no person could discover. That he had been unfortunate might easily be guessed, for bis means were now evidently limited, and yet his _ fortunes had rather seemed to improve than otherwise, since he had resided at the cottage, he having cultivated a large expanse of ground with much care, and having, as it was thought, some annuity besides, for though he was poor, he never seemed absolutely to want anything, and always kept his family with much respectability. The beauty of Angelina was a subject which had excited more curiosity than any other circumstance connected with the family of the Woodficlds, and there were many of the busy gossips who ventured to hint their doubts of her being actually related at all to Arthur, inasmuch as it wgs the opinion of the sagest af these worthies, that she was by far too pretty, and too genteel, and too lady- like to be the niece of a poor cottager; aud indeed, the general conduct of Angelina was not at all calculated to do away with these surmises. She pos- sessed natural accomplishmenta that are generally supposed to belong to the digher ranks of society only ;—reading, music, and drawing, she was pas- sionately fond of, and her general deportment and conversation was of a higher order than is usually acquired by a person in humble life. Angelina’s sweetness of disposition, and the extraordinary beauty of her face and person, had captivated the hearts of many young men in tho neigh cCoMmmicaooks (SO)