The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR dod to her the longest half-hour she had ever passed in her life. But at length the door opened, the usher made his appear- ance, she was conducted across a spacious landing, a door was thrown open, and she entered a-large and splendidly furnished cabinet, where the Minister of the Interior was negligently lounging in a large armchair, and a secretary sat writing at a desk. When a person is about to enter for the first time into the presence of a celebrated or highly placed individual, the imagination invariably depicts to itself some portraiture as the ideal of such individual’s appearance, and with the possessor of ministerial functions is generally associated the idea of at least a mature age, if not an advanced one. ‘Thus was it that Kate Marshall had fancied she was about to be- hold an elderly or an old man, with gray hair, a calm and dignified expression of countenance, and sedate manners, accompanied wih a certain degree of awe-inspiring reserve. The portraiture she had thus in imagination drawn was not justified in any one single point by the actual reality. The Minister of the Interior was a young man, scarcely thirty years of age, with a profusion of raven black hair, a glossy moustache, and well-curled whiskers. His features were regular, his countenance pale, with a slight tinge of sallow- ness; his eyes were dark and full of fire, while the somewhat bluish circles in which they appeared to be set denoted either the wear and tear of close application to business, or else the workings of strong passions combined with habits of dissipa- tion. He was of slight figure, short of stature, but well made. His looks had a certain vivid keenness; his glances were of penetrating sharpness, as if he sought to pierce through and through the soul of any one accosting him. He was dressed in deep black, but with a certain air of fashionable elegance not altogether devoid of pretension. We may here as well observe that the minister was one of those unscrupulous and ambitious political adventurers, who, taking advantage of the disturbed state of Spanish politics, and attaching themselves to the faction which was then dominant, had suddenly arisen from comparative ob- scurity into power and importance. Only a year had elapsed since the storm of insurrections, sweeping over Spain, had terminated in the abdication of the regency by the liberal- minded and magnanimous Espartero, and the reign of CONnNIELOOKS (C(O)