The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. 3 face to face would have detected in the hectic of his cheek, and the glassy lustre of his eye, a victim to that curse of our English climate—consumption, , In its advanced and almost latest stage. Richard Lawrence, from the early age of sixteen to two-and-twenty, had been the sole support of his widowed mother and a sister, six years younger than himself. Close confinement and incessant labour at the desk had gradually undermined a constitution naturally feeble, but which fresh air and a mind at ease might possibly have strengthened. The desolation of poverty, even in boyhood, had shadowed his existence, broken his spirit, chilled his youth, poisgned his open- ing manhood, and in his two-and-twentieth year the lamp of life already burnt with that sickly glare which precedes its extinction. Still there were moments when he felt almost happy,—when, after a day of toil or close confinement at the desk, he sat of an evening by the fireside of his humble home, listening to the fresh, pure voice of his sister Amy, as she sang the songs of their childhood, or read the tender, melancholy verse of his favourite poet, Kirke White, whom her brother used to say he loved, because he died so young,—words which filled the eyes of the grateful, affectionate girl with tears, and caused his mother’s heart to beat with all a mother’s apprehensions. The counting-house, to which Richard was slowly making his way, was situated, as we before stated, in Cannon Street, a narrow, damp, money-making looking B2 COniiclooecl SS (SO