Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 241: what you’re looking at

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

294 REYNOLDS’ WORKS had remained awake, pondering on all- that had passed, endeavouring to persuade herself that her heart was not touched, that she was still inaccessible to love. When sleep had at length visited her eyes, the image of the handsome~ Spaniard appeared to her in her dreams, and these were of a roseate hue. When she awoke again, the bright sun of a cloudless August morning was shining in at the window. She had risen from the couch to avoid the influence of the thoughts of the overnight, and which had been continued in her dreams; she had thrown herself into that armchair, she had taken the book, she had endeavoured to fix her attention upon its pages, but all in vain. Her eyes — those superb dark eyes — were soon gazing upon vacancy; all the powers of her vision were concentrating themselves in- ward, to dwell with a more earnest look upon the image of Count Christoval; her right arm drooped gradually and languidly, and though her hand still retained the volume, yet it was but mechanically, herself being unconscious that she still held it. And then had ensued that long train of reflections which we have described. — Yes; the reverie was a long one, and at its conclusion, Elizabeth had reached the conviction that Diego and herself were destined for each other, and that she must learn to love him as he already loved her. Ah! when once the medita- tions of a woman have reached such a point as this, it ceases to be an endeavour to love: it becomes a facility, a necessity, an easy and natural gliding into the experience of the fulness of the heart’s passion. Elizabeth Paton awoke from her reverie. She was startled up by a new thought which had suddenly flashed in unto her mind. Was it that she dreaded to reveal to Count Christoval the one passage in her own life’s history which assimilated her condition unto this? No, for this she would reveal to him unreservedly and rankly,—ay, and even if necessary, with an eagerness which should prove to him that he need never blush in her presence when retrospecting over the incidents of his own career. What then was it which startled her thus? It was the recollection that she had been married to Villebelle. True, she had surrendered up the documents which she had held in proof of this marriage, but was there not the record thereof in the register at the British embassy at Paris? True likewise, that the Marquis of Villebelle had Gomicbooks (Eo)