Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

= ELIZABETH’S REFLECTIONS 223 Pursuing the train of her reflections, Elizabeth Paton thought to herself that if from the first moment she met Count Christoval in Spain, it was written in the book of destiny that she should become his wife, certain circum- stances were requisite to work out that decree. Amongst _those circumstances was the imperious necessity which had driven her to adopt in England a bandit career, similar to that which he had pursued in Spain. By these means was it brought about that they stood upon the same level. He had been a bandit, and yet had preserved unimpaired many of the finest, the most chivalrous, and the most magnani- mous, attributes of man; she also had been a bandit, and had preserved the most estimable jewel with which woman is endowed. All these considerations appeared to assimilate their conditions to an extraordinary degree, — to fit them for each other, to establish something like a peculiar aptitude in their union; in short, to point him out as the only man to whom she could dare reveal the secret of her career and then accompany him to the altar, and to point her out to him as the only woman whom he might take ds a wife with- out the fear of always blushing as he met her regards. From all that we have been saying, the reader may per- ceive that Elizabeth Paton was rapidly succumbing beneath the influence of that wild worship and ineffable idolatry of which she was the object. She was yielding to that love sO impetuous yet so tender, so fervid and yet so delicate, which the Spaniard experienced for her. No wonder that there was this softness in her looks; no wonder that all her traits should once more become unexceptionably feminine. The influence of love was melting whatsoever of masculine hardihood or artificial boldness wherewith her former pur- suits and habits had temporarily endowed her. She was becoming a woman — all a woman — once again. But had she endeavoured to escape from such thoughts as these, that’on leaving her couch she had taken up a book and thrown herself in that armchair to read it while waiting the entrance of her maid? Yes, she had attempted to divert her mind from dwelling on these new ideas which were rising up within her, stealing into her brain, and gradually diffus- ing their influence throughout her entire being. On retiring to rest aiter her interview with Don Diego Christoval, she had been unable to sleep, — at least for some hours; she ’ CONNIE DOOKS (FO)