Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 246: what you’re looking at

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

ELIZABETH’S REFLECTIONS 229 beth!’ ejaculated the count, in fervid accents. ‘‘ Had I even found you a lost woman — the most depraved of your sex, had I discovered you plunged deep down into the slough of shame and self-abandonment, had I been compelled to seek the vilest den of pollution itself in order to drag you thence, I should not have continued the less your devoted lover, your constant worshipper. But, as a woman, you are all that a lover can admire or a husband hope to find, and whatsoever misdeeds of another character you may have been driven or led to commit weigh as nought with me. You love me, Elizabeth, you have given me your heart, you will become my wife, and my happiness is incapable of diminution.”’ “Thanks, a thousand thanks, dearest Diego,’’?’ murmured Elizabeth, “‘ for this assurance,” and throwing her arms about his neck, she embraced him tenderly of her own accord. They walked together for half an hour, during which Elizabeth represented to the count that she was under such immense obligations to her benefactor Mr. Gunthorpe that she dared take no further step in respect to her love for Christoval until that gentleman returned from Wales. She thought it better at present not to reveal the secret of Mr. Gunthorpe’s high rank, and of the close affinity which sub- sisted between him and her, for the marquis had enjoined the strictest secrecy on that subject, and his daughter would not violate it, even to that man from whom, if she were the complete mistress of her actions, she would have withheld not a single incident or thought. “Mr. Gunthorpe’s absence,” she proceeded to observe, “will not be very long, because I know that he has a particular appointment to keep in London with a young friend of his, a certain Mr. Deveril, for the 20th or 21st of this month. But if, by any accident, his absence should be prolonged even until then, I will write to him, I will tell him everything, —how you have sought me in England, how my heart has been so suddenly filled with a devoted love toward you, and I will beseech him to give his permission that you may visit at the mansion. But in the interval we must see each other no more.”’ “ No more? And for many days,’’ said Count Christoval, in melancholy accents. ‘‘ Do not be thus cruek my beloved one, after having infused so much happiness into my heart.” CONNIE DOOKS (FO)