Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

74 Roanoke of Roanoke Hall. a hasty excuse to the empty air, hastened to greet the phantom visitor. “*Welcome, my lord, welcome,” he cried, with effusion. ‘‘Why does not old Rowley come? He made me a promise that he would;” and sinking his voice to a whisper he withdrew to a distant corner of the room, = where he remained for some time as if ex- postulating eagerly about some topic of in- terest. T had at first felt sorely tempted to laugh aloud at his moppings and mowings, but by degrees these weird and uncanny proceed- ings began to fill me with growing alarm, which was noway diminished by finding that in spite of the eccentricity of his behavior Stephen Ashland’s eye was fixed keenly and piercingly upon me at frequent intervals. The Duchess of Cleveland, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Shaftesbury were all an- nounced with due solemnity to the insane old man, until I found myself gazing round me fearfully, expecting to behold some of these ghostly visitants, and wondering whether | they were really present, though invisible to me. i} a comichbooks.com