The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 288: what you’re looking at

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

A REVELATION 271 with my cousin,” he exclaimed, clutching with avidity at the thought. ‘Isabella is no more your cousin, Adolphus,” responded the old nobleman, ‘‘ than I am your father, and I am not,” he added, emphatically. Adolphus raised his hands to his throbbing brows as if to steady his wildly agitated thoughts; his brain seemed to whirl in confusion. Could it possibly be true? Was he an unwilling impostor? Had he lived thus long an animated lie without knowing it? Had he for twenty-four years passed in the world as a breathing falsehood, though utterly guiltless of wanton deceit? Oh, if it were so, he felt as if he could not survive it, — ’twere a blow too terrible to bear. The old earl had no such depth of feeling, and though he was to a certain degree excited and distressed, yet it was only to a degree, and not nearly to the same extent as the un- happy, the miserable, the soul-crushed Adolphus. Yet all in a moment there sprang up in the young man’s heart a sense of consolation, — yes, consolation in the midst of such overwhelming revelations as these. If he were not the earl’s son, his crime in respect to her whom he had hitherto looked upon as his mother-in-law became in a moment many, many shades lighter to contemplate, dark though its hue still remained. ‘Tell me how all this happened; explain it,” he said, with quick and excited utterance, ‘‘ for Heaven’s sake keep me not another moment in suspense! ”’ ‘““ Listen then,’’ said the earl, speaking with less silliness and flippancy than was his wont. “It was at Bloomfield that I was residing with my first wife when a son and heir was born twenty-four years and a half ago. A few days after that birth, important business hurried me away to the Continent, and the serious embarrassments in which a near relation, who is long since dead, had involved himself at Vienna, detained me there for a period of four months. When I returned to England my wife was in a northern county, on a visit to some relations there, and indeed, as letters had previously informed me, I was assured that it was for the sake of her health that she had removed thither. I rejoined her; the child whom she represented to me as my son was healthy and thriving. Years passed on, and you know with what kindness you were treated by her who | CONnNIEDOOKS (C(O)