Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 207: what you’re looking at

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

190 REYNOLDS’ WORKS “ That you, Elizabeth, should have been led to believe in your brother’s death, was likewise necessary to the carry- ing out of the villainous scheme, for it is clear that Sir John Marston has been all along afraid lest you should by some means or another obtain a clue to the fraud which had been practised toward yourself, and follow it up to detect that which had likewise been perpetrated toward your brother. That when you married the Marquis of Villebelle, Sir John Marston should have stipulated with you both for your immediate severance, was likewise a necessary precaution, for if you had lived together as husband and wife, you would have told Villebelle all the circumstances of your past his- tory, and he would have maintained his right to recéive from Sir John Marston a full explanation of the circumstances attending so mysterious a marriage. And that Sir John Marston should the other day have endeavoured to prevent the Marquis of Villebelle from contracting a second marriage, with the Honourable Miss Constance Farefield, is likewise easily explained. For if the bankers learned that you were alive, while the marquis contracted this second marriage, they would suspect there had been some foul play in respect to the first; they would demand explanations of Lord Peters- field and Sir John Marston, they might follow up the clue, and exposure would follow. No wonder, indeed, was it that Marston should have allowed you four hundred a year, considering the immensity of the fortune he had robbed you of, — considering also his anxiety to prevent you from instituting disagreeable inquiries. But let all that pass. Petersfield and Marston possess the secret of your mother’s shame, and they must not be driven through base revenge to drag all the circumstances of the past before the world.”’ The marquis paused, and after a few moments’ reflection, he continued his discourse. ‘‘ Perhaps you are surprised that I did not reveal myself to you yesterday, Elizabeth, after you unfolded the narrative of your past life, or that I did not tell you who I was ere I commenced my own narrative just now. But it was so much easier for me to develop all the incidents of the past in the form of a mere narrative than if I had at once thrown off the disguise and spoken of myself in the first person. Yes, it was less painful to tell the tale as if it were the biog- raphy of another, and not mine own. But there was a mo- Gomichbooks (E(0)