Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 263: what you’re looking at

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

246 REYNOLDS’ WORKS of her mind has been altogether natural. It may be described as a calmness both deathlike and glacial. It has preserved her from excitement and irritability, but I fear that if Providence had not sent you hither now, with all these happy tidings, she would gradually sink down into idiotic apathy. She seldom speaks, and when she does, it is with a strange coldness, — a coldness that it does one harm to feel the influence of. She seldom reads and never works, but she either sits in the drawing-room gazing from the window, or else wanders in the garden, or about the neigh- bourhood, in a kind of dull, listless mood. Nevertheless, there are moments of activity with her, and these are when dispensing her charities; for her jointure far more than suffices for the maintenance of the establishment in this part of the country where everything is so cheap, and she ex- pends large sums in doing good. Her benevolence has rendered her an universal favourite as well as an object of great interest, but I believe that most persons in the dis- trict fancy the poor lady is not altogether right in her intel- lects. Alas! they know not her story as you and I know it, my lord — But I think that we have no need for further | discourse, and certainly no necessity for dwelling upon mournful topics. Shall I go and prepare her ladyship to see you? Shall I break to her the intelligence that her son Adolphus lives, that Frank also lives, and that Elizabeth is worthy of her love? ”’ “Yes, go—go quickly, my good woman,” said the Marquis of Eagledean, all his agitation reviving at the thought that in a few minutes he would again behold the countenance of her whom he had loved for upwards of thirty years. “T go, my lord,’’ replied Mrs. Jameson, cheerfully. “ But one word more. What may I tell her of Adolphus? Con- sider the questions that a mother is sure to ask — ” ‘“T comprehend you—TI understand you full well,” exclaimed the marquis. ‘‘ Tell her that he is a fine, tall, handsome young man of whom she will be proud. But more; there are other tidings with which you may gladden her poor heart. Tell her that her daughter Elizabeth is one of the handsomest women of whom England can boast, and that Frank is a youth of an almost fabulous beauty. Go and tell her all this, and I will await you here.”’ Eomicbooks (Eo)