Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 227: what you’re looking at

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

210 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Addressing him in the French language, she said, ‘‘ Don Diego, what brings you to England? ”’ ‘“ Your image,”’ he replied, in the English tongue, at the same time carrying her hand to his lips; and kissing it rapturously ere she could withdraw it, he said, “‘ That image which has never once been absent from my mind since you fled from the tower in the wilds of Catalonia.” Elizabeth gazed upon him with the utmost astonishment, for he was addressing her in the English language, — spoken, too, with the utmost accuracy and with but so little of a foreign accent that it was barely perceptible. She knew at the time when she was 1n Spain he was utterly unacquainted with her native tongue, and she naturally marvelled to perceive that he had acquired it to such perfection. ‘“T have learned the English language for your sake,” he said, with a deep tenderness of voice and a corresponding look, but both alike mingled with a chivalrous respect, just as he was wont to deport himself toward her during her captivity in Catalonia. ‘“‘ And you asked me where- fore I came to England!’’ he continued. ‘‘ Need you have put that question? But let me put a question to you, and I beseech and implore you to respond to it at once. Have | you ever thought of me with kindness since you fled from ‘Spain? ” ‘“ T have thought of you with friendship,” replied Elizabeth Paton, seriously but frankly, ‘‘ and within the last few days, when relating my adventures in Catalonia, I have spoken of you in similar terms.”’ ‘“ Friendship,’? murmured Count Christoval, mournfully, but with a sudden access of hopefulness, he exclaimed, ‘“ Yet may not friendship prove the germ of a more tender feeling? I know you are not married — I have every reason to believe that you do not love another — Indeed, I have been assured that you pride yourself on being unsusceptible of love. O Elizabeth! so bright and beautiful a creature as you, to possess a heart that is unsusceptible of love. No, no; it were impossible. It were an anomaly in human nature. And I am not without the hope that destiny has reserved for me the happiness of thawing that glacial soul of yours.”’ “ Don Diego Christoval,’’ answered Elizabeth, still speak- ing seriously, but with a certain degree of kindness in her Gomichbooks (E(0)