The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER IX THE WIFE Tue reader will not have forgotten that the mansion of the Viscount and Viscountess de Chateauneuf stood upon a gentle eminence about a mile distant from the picturesque village of Auteuil. We have already stated that by his marriage with the sugar baker’s daughter, the viscount obtained an annual revenue equivalent to twenty thousand pounds sterling of British money; and this income, large for any individual in any country, was an immense one for a French nobleman. It is therefore scarcely necessary to observe that the chateau was furnished in the most sump- tuous manner, or that there were troops of domestics forming the household establishment. But riches do not constitute happiness, and this was a truth which the poor viscountess could, if she had chosen, proclaim with the utmost sincerity. _ Stephanie possessed a warm and generous disposition, but her mind was not as powerful as her heart was sensitive. She loved her husband with all that heart and with all her soul, and she had expected, on accompanying him to the altar, that his attachment would be equally fervid. She soon however found that it was not so, and, as Madame Durand had explained to Mrs. Chesterfield, the viscountess sought to find in herself the causes of this coldness on her husband’s part, rather than to make them the source of reproach toward him. She exerted all her powers to please; she was never wearied of lavishing upon him the most delicate attentions and the tenderest caresses, if he would only give her an opportunity of proffering them. She studied to render herself agreeable; she scrupulously examined her own conduct, bearing, and manners, comparing them with those of her female acquaintances, in order to ascertain 04 | CONNIE NO KS (E(0)