The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

Ts THE OLD MAN’S SECOND MARRIAGE 11 Lady Saxondale was a woman of passions, but not of sentiments; the former were strong in proportion as they occupied the place which the latter ought to have held in her soul, and those passions being egotistical and selfish, as all passions necessarily are, were equally capable of prompting her to generous and gocd actions as to a course the very reverse. Circumstances had therefore favoured the former alternative, and as she was ambitious, she felt grateful to the man who had ministered to her ambition. She now felt, too, that she occupied the proud position of the mother of that heir to whom her husband’s title and estates would fall; and also cherishing the hope that there was but little chance oi these estates passing away from her own offspring, she felt a pride in contemplating the responsibility connected with her position. ‘These feelings not merely made her cherish the husband who had given her this position and _ had invested her, as-it were, with this proud responsibility, but they also imparted a certain matronly sedateness to her mind and demeanour, so that at one and twenty, Lady Saxondale, while still in the bloom of youthful beauty, _ possessed the experience and bore the air of a woman of several years older. But lest we should be misunderstood in any portion of these remarks, we must observe that the lapse of those four years since her marriage, so far from having in any way marred her loveliness, had tended only to develop her charms to the height of their splendour, and to convert a precocious girlhood into a grand and mag- nificent womanhood. The reader is already aware that three children were the fruit of her marriage with Lord Saxondale. The two eldest were girls, and were respectively christened Juliana and Constance; the last-born, now a couple of months old, was named Edmund. In respect to the infant babe, we must observe that he was marked on the shoulder with a straw- berry. This mark was but very small, still in its diminutive proportions it bore an extraordinary resemblance to the above-named fruit; and of course the old nurse, the female servants, and the gossips of the neighbourhood were positive in declaring that Lady Saxondale must have longed for strawberries ere the birth of her son. Be this as it may, it is not the less certain that the mark was there upon the child’s shoulder; and her ladyship congratulated herself that CONNIE OOOKS (S(O)