The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 328: what you’re looking at

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

THE SISTERS oll that his suit for your hand would never receive a sanction irom her lips. The result of that insult was that the marquis found himself compelled to abstain from visiting at the house. But still our mother was not satisfied with having thus excluded him from the mansion. She sought to poison your mind against him, so as effectually to raise up a barrier between yourselves. This she did, not pointedly as if she really believed you loved him, but by innuendo and casual remark, always in your presence, but not as if her words were expressly spoken for you, and for you alone. She could not deny that he was really. what he represented himself, that he was well connected, and that he belonged to one of the oldest families in France, but she gave you to understand that he was a man of broken fortunes, that the sources of his income, poor as it must be, were not ostensible, and that it was even rumoured he had been already married — to an English lady, and that his wife was still alive. ‘These and a thousand other things did our mother from time to time let drop, in order to set you against your beloved Etienne de Villebelle.’’ ‘ But why, my dear Juliana,”’ asked Constance, “ recapit- ulate all these things? Why remind me of circumstances which at the time troubled me much? And what possible connection is there between all this and the revelation which I am awaiting from your lips? ”’ ‘‘ T‘asked you to listen patiently, my dear sister,’’ rejoined Juliana, speaking with the seriousness of one who had not lost the thread of the discourse in any confusion of ideas, but was following it up in her own way and in order to lead her listener on by her own specific path to the point which must be ultimately reached. ‘‘ What I intended by all those recapitulations was to remind you of the pains and the trouble which our mother has taken in order to set you against the Marquis of Villebelle; and she only desisted from constantly bringing up his name in a disparaging manner when I counselled you to practise a dissimulation that should lead her to believe her words had made the desired impression upon your mind and that your opinion had been altogether altered in respect to him. Well, but as I was saying, you see the immense trouble Lady Saxon- dale took to set you as she thought against the object of your affections, and had she not been led to believe that GomiilGodooks (C(O)