The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR 43 and flushing cheeks, ‘‘ that Spain is degenerate, but sunken indeed it must be below the uttermost extreme of my con- ception when amongst its rulers 1t reckons such a man as thou. What? You would violate the sanctity of correspond- ence entrusted to the very means of conveyance which the government itself monopolizes, leaving none other open? You commit a hideous crime by proposing to barter a human life against a woman’s honour; and yet if the injured one dares speak of your enormity, you threaten to treat her as if she were the culprit and you were the law’s vindicator. And you tell me that you know I shall come back to you, and that when I do come, I must be prepared to surrender myself without another murmur to your arms? Oh, sir! 1s it possi- ble that you could address me thus and not avert your looks in shame? ”’ Having thus spoken, Kate Marshall turned away from the minister’s presence, and issued forth from the cabinet. Had she paused another moment to observe his countenance, she would have seen that so far from being moved or affected by the way in which she had spoken, there was only a slight perceptible scornful wreathing of his lip, and as the door closed behind her, he said to himself, as if in allusion to her prideful indignation, ‘‘ Nevertheless, she will come back again.”’ And in the afternoon of that same day, the Minister of the Interior appeared in the Chamber of Deputies, and in an eloquent speech proposed a measure for giving an impulse to the moral and religious improvement of the people. And any one to have heard him dilate with all his oratorical power upon the necessity of encouraging lofty, refined, and honourable notions amongst the masses, would have thought that he himself must be deeply imbued with the sense of his high and important subject. CONNIE DOOKS (FO)