The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

YOUTHFUL LOVE 163 world’s languages be, different too in the richness or the poverty of idioms, figures, and phrases, yet have they each and all a sufficiency, — ay, even a copiousness of words wherewith to form that tale. But it is not our purpose to record the conversation which then took place between Christian and Isabella. Suffice it to say that after hesitating and trembling and falling into con- fusion, the youth, in the very midst of his bewilderment, at length found himself breathing the avowal which he had so much longed to make, and in Isabella’s blushing cheeks and downcast looks he read the response long ere it was softly mur- mured from her lips. Then they were happy both, oh, so happy, joy beating in their hearts, and their hands thrilling to each other’s touch. The maiden spoke but little, the youth not much more, when once the reciprocal avowals were made; and the little that they did say was connected only with their love; they spoke not of the future, they thought not of how the hope which was in their hearts was ever to be realized; it was sufficient for them that they loved each other, and that for the present they were together. It was not until the following day that Christian ventured to speak to Isabella relative to those mysteries which had surrounded her at the time of their first acquaintance at the parish clerk’s house, and now it was that our young hero received the following narrative from Miss Vincent’s lips: ‘““My mother, Lady Isabella, was the sister of the Earl of Lascelles, and many years younger than himself. Were she alive now she would be scarcely forty. She was young therefore when she first learned to love my father, Mr. Vincent, who was only a poor heutenant in the army. But though poor in respect to the world’s goods, he was rich in every intellectual accomplishment and generous quality of the heart. Lady Isabella, who had long been an orphan, did not reside with her brother the earl, but with a maiden aunt in the country. This aunt was proud, harsh, and severe, and the moment she perceived that a feeling of affection was springing up between her niece and Lieutenant Vincent, she unceremoniously and rudely forbade the latter her house. At the same time she wrote to the Earl of Lascelles, who was in London, informing him that his sister had fallen in love with a penniless officer, and that he had better come and fetch her away at once. The earl did so, and when he had CONNIE DoOolKS (E(0)