The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 260: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXII HENRIETTA LEYDEN Tue ballet had commenced, and Angela Vivaldi, more brilliant and more beautiful if possible than ever, was received with enthusiastic plaudits. Hers was a style of dancing which combined so much exquisite refinement of modesty and such winning grace, that she appealed far less to the sense than to the sentiment of those who possessed souls capable of being moved by the dancer’s more chastening effects. Never with her was it a study to adopt voluptuous attitudes, nor make meretricious displays of her charms. There was a purity of soul shining as it were through her, a halo of innocence and chastity surrounding her, a perfume of virginal freshness filling the atmosphere in which she moved. She danced not to please the libertine, but to chasten him; not to excite the passions, but to absorb them, as it were, 1n the more elevated feeling of a poetic refinement. At first she danced alone; then she was joined by two other leading members of the ballet, and the three together, personifying the Graces, performed a measure which by its elegance and its tasteful simplicity enchanted all the spectators. The beauteous Angela, with her long dark hair playing in ringlets upon her ivory shoulders, held a garland of flowers in her right hand, while her two companions made a gauzy scarf float high above their heads. The three threw all the lyrical sweetness of poesy into their perform- ance, so that while their airily bounding and flitting forms displayed every grace for which the dance affords such admirable scope, there was nothing in gesture, movement, attitude, or look to shock the most punctilious observer, if “any such were present. But then Angela’s companions caught as it were the chastening spirit which animated 243 ECORVICLOO® <S (C©)