Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 149: what you’re looking at

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

132 REYNOLDS’ WORKS with delicate respect, his looks were filled with so much admiration mingled with so much despair, there was alto- gether such a blending of sincerity and pathos and manly appeal in his air, his words, and his manner that I experienced for him a boundless compassion. Knowing that he possessed a generous heart and certain lofty sentiments of honour, in spite of the lawless kind of life he was leading, I thought to touch and to move him by representing my assumed position as a real and veritable one. I accordingly addressed him in terms of impressive seriousness. I told him that I was a married woman, and was separated from my husband -in consequence of the incompatibility of our dispositions, but that inasmuch as I could not on the one hand contract another alliance, I was equally resolute on the other never to lose sight of my honour and good name. The count looked much distressed, and reflected profoundly. At length he asked if it were impossible 1 could ever love him. [f told him that while I felt deeply grateful for all the kindness I had experienced at his hands— and that although I should ever entertain a friendly remembrance of him — yet that my heart was incapable of experiencing a more tender sentiment. ‘To part from you,’ he said, in a mournful voice, ‘ will be the same as laying violent hands upon my- self; it will be an act of suicide, and I have not the courage to accomplish it. I beseech you to remain at the tower a short time longer. I will not insult myself so far as to assure you that I am incapable of any outrage toward you. If ~ you would consent to live all your life with me as a sister, I should be happy. Mine is no gross and sensual passion; it is pure and ethereal; it is the strangest and most romantic love that ever yet filled the heart of man. So long as I can enjoy the light of your presence, so long as | can hear the - musie of your voice playing in my ears, so long as I am permitted to gaze upon you from time to time, and dwell upon the beauty of your countenance, therein shall all my ideas of earthly happiness be concentrated. Surely, sefiora, such a love as this is not be hghtly repudiated? Surely you will take some compassion upon the man who proffers you such a love? ’ ‘“T answered that I would speak to him as if it were a sister addressing a brother, and I went on to represent that for his own sake the sooner we parted the better, that his Gomicbooks (Eo)