The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 375: what you’re looking at

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

308 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Saxondale, would she invent such a story? For what pur- pose? Surely not to gratify her vanity? She who has had nobles falling at her feet and soliciting her hand needs not to vaunt the admiring homage of a humble artist, especially if that homage were never offered at all. But if not from vanity, was it wickedness? No, no, Lady Saxondale is incapable of that. A worldly-minded woman she is, but not so thoroughly black-hearted. Oh, I am tortured with suspense, I am racked with uncertainty. Would to Heaven that I had never known William Deveril at all, or, at least, that I had never loved him! ’’ Again did Florina’s tears flow thick and fast, and her bosom was convulsed with sobs. ‘“ Oh, if he were really innocent, after all,’’ she continued in her musings, “‘ what a frightful indignity is this which my aunt has ordered to be put upon him! To have the door shut in his face, to be told to send in his bill, like any trades- man who is discarded for insolence or some other fault — good heavens! if Deveril be innocent, I say, how keenly, how deeply will he feel this insult! And this is not all. His character will be ruined. Lady Saxondale is spreading the story — oh, she would not dare do this unless she had just ground. No, she would not dare do it, it is too serious, and I fear, oh, I fear, that Deveril is indeed false. Ah, why have I loved him? There is not a book I ever read and in which love is introduced, that it 1s not represented as enduring the severest trials. Why does every poet depict love as being thus tortured? Why does every novelist describe its current as never flowing smoothly? Because the poet and the novelist draw their inspirations from the facts passing in the great world before their eyes, and therefore it is the truth which they delineate. Oh, then this truth, this grand, striking, and imperious truth is that love must have its trials, its sorrows, and its disappointments, ay, and that the rose of love is too often doomed to wither prematurely and perish before its time. Alas, would that I had never allowed the rose of love to shed its fragrance upon my soul! It is a fragrance which a blight turns into a plague-mist, and which instils poison where it at first appeared to be only capable of shedding sweets.” In this manner mused the unhappy Florina Staunton, till at length her ideas reached a pitch so torturing, so CONNIE OO KS (E(0)