The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

THE AVOWAL OF LOVE 49 clue would have remained, and none has ever been found. Alas! on what belief, then, must my conjectures settle? You can well understand, my dear Florence, how under such circumstances I am inspired by an ardent longing, a deep, unappeasable yearning, to discover the author or authors of this dreadful crime, if such a crime have in reality been perpetrated. Therefore, in offering you my hand, it is req- uisite I should explain to you that although your image will ever henceforth be uppermost on the bright side of my thoughts, yet on the dark side will remain the memory of that sire whose blood seems to be crying up from some un- known spot for vengeance on those who shed it. Tell me, then, will you accept as your husband one whose thoughts will be thus to some extent divided, one who at any moment may have to rush away from your sweet society, to follow up some new track, some fresh clue that may develop itself? ”’ “Continue not this painful topic,” said Florence, in a tremulous voice and with tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘The feelings which inspire you relative to your father are most honourable, most admirable, and when it shall be my happiness to become your wife,’’ she added, with blushing cheeks, “it will be my duty to encourage you in this filial research to which you have devoted yourself. Yes, and also to succour you in it to the utmost of my power.” “ Words cannot express the gratitude I feel toward you, Florence, for these assurances,’ said Valentine. ‘‘ In the midst of the sorrow which has enveloped me, as it were, in a cloud, you have been sent to irradiate my path and cheer me with your angel presence. Pardon me, oh, pardon me, if I have now by this conversation infused into your mind some of that gloom which hangs about my own soul, but I could not, I dared not, conceal a single thought nor a single feeling at a moment when our hearts should be revealed to each other and the fullest confidence should subsist between us.”’ © Yes, we should indeed mutually make known all our secrets,’ said Florence, suddenly becoming pensive and even melancholy, so that Malvern instantaneously perceived it was a mournfulness apart from that which his own language had a few minutes before been calculated to inspire. ‘‘ Yes,” she again observed, in a musing manner and with deepen- ing pensiveness, ‘‘ there must be no secrets between us, and CORNICLOOL <S (C(O) im