The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XVI THE WIFE’S STRATAGEM We must now observe that during the interval of Jessica’s absence to fetch the Earl of Curzon, Venetia had thrown off her gown and put on a loose morning wrapper, thus leaving herself in an elegant undress. She likewise allowed her hair to flow in all its auburn richness and silken luxurlance over the shoulders, which were now left bare in their dazzling whiteness, while a few stray tresses were suffered to fall around her throat and over her bosom, where they lay like dark gold upon polished ivory. Into her looks she had thrown all that sensuous wanton languor which rendered her so dangerously enchanting and so overpoweringly capti- vating in the presence of a man endowed with strong pas- S10NS. Nor was the effect of all this preparation on her part and of the luxurious exposure of her rich and resplendent charms lost upon the Earl of Curzon, notwithstanding his mind had been so much occupied with other things. Moreover, although he had once revelled in those beauties on which his eyes now settled eagerly and intently, yet it was but once, and that was far, very far, from being sufficient to sate the strong passion with which Venetia had inspired him from the very first moment of their acquaintance. The reader 1s of course aware that after a certain com- munication which Venetia had received from Colonel Mal- pas, she could not in her heart entertain anything like a favourable sentiment toward the Earl of Curzon. When with the colonel on the Continent he had evidently talked of his amour with herself; perhaps, for anything Venetia knew to the contrary, he had even boasted elsewhere and to others of the conquest he had obtained over her. At all 142 ECORMIClIOO KS (E(0)