Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

Roanoke of Roanoke Hall, 73 . upward until it blended with the complicated vaulting of the ceiling. Oard tables were set out at intervals on the polished floor, and these, together with the rest of the chamber, | were illuminated with a profusion of wax candles, forming a soft and pleasing glow of brilliant light such as I had never before beheld. ; Yet in all this prospect of splendor and festivity the only person I could discern was Stephen Ashland, as I rightly concluded my fantastic host must be. I watched him as closely as I dared, while he flitted from chair to chair, now bowing low to some great dame and uttering some high-flown compliment, now exchanging apparently some forgotten scandal with a noble lord, and I was greatly struck by his courtly and dignified manners. His appearance, moreover, would have been impressive had not his truly handsome fea- tures been so thickly smeared with paint and rouge, and I marvelled much at such a de- meanor in one whom I had been accustomed to hear spoken of as a mere farmer. “Lord Rochester!” exclaimed Jamie at the door; and Stephen Ashland, murmuring comichooks.com