The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 165: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XI INCIDENTS AT THE EARL OF LASCELLES’ MANSION Now that the fine weather had set in, there was a particular room on the ground floor of the Earl of Lascelles’ mansion which the Countess Ethel seemed particularly to like. It was not large, but elegantly furnished, and, as her ladyship said, it had the finest piano of any apartment in the house. Adjoining this room was a bedchamber, likewise so ex- quisitely appointed that it might serve as a lady’s boudoir, and the windows of these apartments were on the side of the house looking upon a grass plat dotted with parterres of flowers, and beyond which stretched a noble extent of garden. For the last week or two the Countess of Lascelles had complained of indisposition, representing that she was. nervous, had sick headaches, and was affected by the slightest noise. She had therefore begged the earl to permit her to occupy these rooms for a brief space, adding that she only thought thus of separating herself from him in order that she might recover her health all the more speedily; and as at the same time she made this request, she cajolingly de- sired him to send her the first proof-sheets of his memoirs to peruse, assuring him that she burned with impatience to become acquainted with a work that would astonish the world, the vain, frivolous old man assented to the temporary separation of chambers. Now it happened that one morning at about nine o’clock, the earl made his way to the apartments which we have just been describing, he having taken it into his head to relate to the countess an adventure which he had never yet told her, and for the simple reason that he had only concocted it since six o’clock on that same morning, at which hour he had 148 CONNIE NO KS