The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 201: what you’re looking at

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

184 REYNOLDS’ WORKS disappointed she should expect our heroine to renew her own visit to the Regent’s Park. They embraced warmly and separated. Christina was half- afraid of finding Lord Octavian down-stairs in order to hand her to the carriage, but he was not there, and she took her way back toward Bayswater. While seated in the vehicle she reviewed every incident which had occurred within the last four hours. Scarcely a doubt remained in her mind as to the fact that Zoe had penetrated her husband’s secret, and now a reminiscence suddenly flitted into Christina’s brain. She wondered that she had not thought of it before. Tor, on that day when the accident with the phaeton occurred, it had struck her for an instant that she beheld Zoe’s eyes suddenly close as she turned toward her immediately after those passionate exclamations had burst from Octavian’s lips. Ah, doubtless Zoe’s ear had caught them! They had revealed to her the secret of her husband’s love for another; and if Zoe had really thus known 1 all along, it would account for the entire tenor of the admirable lady’s conduct since that moment which struck a fatal blow to her happiness. ‘“ Good heavens!’”’ thought Christina to herself, shudder- ing and shivering at the bare idea that her surmise was correct, ‘‘ what a sacrifice of feeling is the generous-hearted Zoe making in every way. She knows her husband’s un- lawful and disastrous love; she knows that I, though Heaven can tell how unwittingly, am its object, and yet she does not hate me. No, she is too magnanimous. And she will not make her husband blush in her presence by suffering him to perceive that she has penetrated his secret. Perhaps she pities him; perhaps she feels for him, making allowances for a heart that has no power over its own volition, and now she is cherishing this secret, she locks it up in her own bosom, she studies by every action, word, and look to excite the belief that she suspects it not. Admuirable Zoe! Ah, no wonder that there is sadness in her tone, soft plaintiveness in her looks, for these it is impossible she can altogether control.’’ And then, while still seated in the carriage which was bearing her homewards, Christina wept scalding: tears of anguish, — wept as if she herself were a wilitully guilty destructrix of the amiable Zoe’s happiness. CONNIE NO KS