Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

MR. GUNTHORPE’S VISITS 59 “ T know it,” said Mr. Gunthorpe. “ I did not mean that I was going to inquire whether you had told me the truth, but whether everything is as you have been led to believe it, whether, in short, this young man’s lofty notions are real and not visionary. I dare say, however, they are real enough, for I myself happen to know something of his uncle, or of him whom he believes to be his uncle, whichever it may be, and what I do know of that man is not altogether to his eredit,’’ added Mr. Gunthorpe, with a degree of bitter- ness that he was not often wont to display. ‘“‘ Many, many years have elapsed since he and I met. He was plain Mr. Everton then. But perhaps you will be surprised, Henrietta, when I tell you that I have seen your Adolphus, granting him to be the same — ”’ , “You have seen him?” ejaculated Henrietta. “Yes, but it was in his childhood, many years ago. He was then a beautiful boy, with dark eyes and hair — ’’ “He has dark eyes and hair,” said Henrietta, with a smile and a blush, — the smile being one of joy, for the innocent maiden thought that the identity was thus com- pletely established between her Adolphus and the one of whom Mr. Gunthorpe was speaking. “| think,” said the old gentleman, in a grave and solemn: voice, ‘‘ that I should recognize his lineaments, though more than sixteen years have elapsed since I beheld him, and then he was but twelve years old.”’ ‘Sixteen and twelve are twenty-eight, and Adolphus is twenty-eight,”’ cried Henrietta, with increasing satisfac- tion. | “Ah, I see that you love him,” said’ Mr. Gunthorpe, “and no matter whether he be the real Lord Everton or not, if he is a worthy young man — ”’ ‘““ Alas! consider all his sufferings,’?’ murmured Henrietta, the tears starting into her eyes. “ For sixteen years was he the inmate of a place that to him was a prison. He has seen too little of life to have learned any of its evil ways.”’ “ That captivity,’’ observed Mr. Gunthorpe, with a deeper eravity than before, ‘1s in itself almost a sufficient proof that he is the real Lord Everton. Oh, what guilt does that man—his uncle—have to answer for! But I must now delay not. Farewell for the present. I shall call again on my way homeward, as I dare say a certain young lady,”’ EORNICLOOO SS (FO)